Lafzi Muamma is a series of work by the duo Hira Khan (Pakistan/Germany) and Richi Bhatia (India).

Hira’s practice primarily focusses on sculpture, citing an avid inclination for experiments in consumeristic materials and forms as her guiding force. One of her significant areas of research and drawing lies in the usage of overhead water tanks within the port city of Karachi, and the undercurrents related to the usage and shortage of water within its geography. Alongside, Richi’s practice primarily floats between live art, installation, photography and sculpture. A multidisciplinary experimentation with both medium and form is integral to the nature of her practice. Her work traverses from extreme intuitive practices to the protracting processes trying to interrogate body in its varied surroundings, that find its root from an autobiographical context. Being a visual artist her struggle has always led in a survey of evaluating the role of personal history against the set or standard notions of the society we live in.

An exchange project between the duo initiated out of shared ancestral history that witnessed the partition, and the subsequent loss of languages and geography. Both Karachi and Mumbai/Ahmedabad– being a confluence of various cultures and people, since the pre-partition years led to the revelations that forged the project extensively. The yet existing, shop hoardings in Hindi and Gujarati in Karachi, and similar hoardings in Urdu and Arabic in Mumbai and Ahmedabad served as great resources, further acknowledging a literary crisis within its respective topographical location. That being so, Lafzi Muamma became as a probe into each other’s immediate surrounding and autobiographical nuances. The project aims to diversify barter - through visual and literary interventions in the form of words, phrases, images and ideas woven across four languages that include Sindhi, Hindi, Urdu - of native relevance and English. The project is also an attempt to negate the hierarchy of inherent languages within itself. The process has evolved and shaped as a diaristic approach, born out of a shared history and interest of ‘home’ and parallel analogies between the duo.

The set of images developed by Hira within the project have been shared by Bhatia, from New Delhi, Mumbai and Ahmedabad; that have been constructed as photo montages, using hand stich over a mundane consumer item of theli’s (Plastic bags). Within the similar lines, Bhatia has sculpted the images shared by Hira from Karachi, that encompass her immediate social surroundings and interior scapes. The images have been carefully chosen and crafted that speaks of the extraordinary political times we share and live in; that have been further fabricated and drawn using powder earth pigments and woven using hair that serve as significant metaphors of belonging and loss – on the either side of the drawn line. The series of images is a crafted memoir, in the digital era across two countries.

Within the similar lines, the duo intends to further this exchange with a new chapter that delves into the similar ideas but with a different lens. Hira’s recent transition to Munich (Germany) and Richi’s current transition to Ahmedabad serve as point of departures wherein they intervene and formulate the ideas of home through nostalgia and alienation within a geography, taking language as significant point of departure.

Specifications:https://www.separationsgeography.com/work-1/richi-hira (please follow the link in case of any confusion with regards to the title as they are in hindi and sindhi)