GALLERYSKE in New Delhi presents “Hifz,” a solo exhibition by artist Faiza Hasan, running from September 26 to October 31, 2025.
The exhibition title references the Islamic practice of memorizing Quran verses through repetition and discipline. Hasan applies this concept of remembrance and preservation to explore biographical memory as an act of autonomous assertion against political erasure and social restriction.
The body of work consists primarily of charcoal drawings based on family photographs spanning multiple decades. Scenes depict domestic interiors with figures whose faces are sometimes obscured by half-opened envelopes or removed through tears in the paper. Gilded calligraphy annotates the images. The drawings capture gatherings, feasts, and moments of ordinary life within Muslim households.
According to curator Arushi Vats, the work challenges conventional expectations of representation. The drawings do not seek to persuade viewers of the validity of Muslim lives or conform to state frameworks of recognition. Instead, they demand “an unflinching ethical accordance—the right for its subjects to remain as they are and to become as they might, the right to be viewed in variations of revelation and concealments.”
The exhibition also includes embroidery works where stitches function as repositories of time and repetition. Paper serves as a central material throughout, reclaiming its symbolic significance in India’s political discourse where documentary proof (“kaghaz”) determines claims to citizenship and belonging for Muslim communities.
Hasan’s cropped, angular compositions reflect the fragmented nature of memory, influenced by photographs in family albums that her grandmother cut up. These gaps and incompleteness become intentional features that resist demands for visual wholeness or narrative unity.
Photo credit: SV Photographic
The exhibition text was written by Arushi Vats, a doctoral researcher in the History of Art at the University of Cambridge and Associate Lecturer at Cambridge School of Art. Vats is a recipient of the Momus-Eyebeam Critical Writing Fellowship 2021 and the Art Scribes Award 2021.
The exhibition will be on view at GALLERYSKE in New Delhi through October 31, 2025.
Cover image: Faiza Hasan | AC Guards | Charcoal on paper | 26 x 13 inches | Image courtesy: GALLERYSKE and the artist
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