WALKING in
HAUZ KHAS

Saba Hasan

The Hauz Khas madarsa and its lake have been adopted by me as artistic inspiration, a challenge, a form of history and a symbol, actually, an entire philosophical microcosm, right from the start. I take a long time to develop my creative ideas and prefer to work in a variety of media since each provides me with a fulcrum for a fresh perspective and acts as a catalyst in a short period of time, to help my thoughts unfold. So I have been walking, sketching, video-taping, photographing and painting in Hauz Khas for more than two decades now and am probably the only artist to possess a record of all the sinews and cracks in the monument and of course its changing landscape in different seasons and continuously altering light. My more realistic renditions of this area have over the years, moved closer to an allegorical representation which revolves around some other ideas I have been working with, like knowledge, which the old stone madarsa is an ancient surviving symbol of; and then the various notions and nuances attached to the concept of truth, which appears to me here more in the shape of the natural landscape, as you can see from these photographs and a careful abstraction from it to encompass the element of truth in time.