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Polymath, film director and artist Muzaffar Ali’s Farasnama at Bikaner House in Delhi is a serenade to the legend of the horse. Spread over two floors at the Centre for Contemporary Art are a series of works that draw you into the haunts of equine shadows as well as enchant you for design dynamics in framing.Muzaffar designs his own frames as well as creates his own aura with myriad moorings in moods. The paintings of horses range from large to small but each work is a grading of heads that are bent in gentle grace or looking at the sky and beyond.Art historian and hotelier Neemrana Hotels Aman Nath spent two hours at the exhibition and said : “ Contemporary character is what defines his many journeys in his exploration in art.The calligraphic works are a delight to behold.”
Amorphous aura
The ground floor at Bikaner House has his horses in all kinds of shades that are quiescent and quaint for expressive echoes.In many of his works, we see rearing horses, figures pulled from antiquity to the present day. These powerful images reflect Muzaffar’s belief in the intuitive nature of horses, which, for him, symbolize primal strength and raw emotion. But the beauty of these horses lies in the fact that they are born of indigenous accents.
“ My love for horses goes back many years,” Muzaffar explains. “From films to books, to life itself, I’ve been captivated by their beauty, strength, and spirit. The story of Duldul in the Muharram processions touched my heart, as it exemplified the courage, loyalty, and bravery of a horse. I paint horses to create my own cinematic sequences in my mind.”
Buckle Installation with mannequin
The buckle installation with the litmannequin torsois the piece de resistance in the language of the permutation of design elements. The horse head buckles have their own identity and the etched horse design on leather adds vintage vitality.
These customized buckles, made to complement enviable waistlines, are crafted in various shades of tanned leather, each a stunning piece in its own right. The horse buckle belts are not just accessories; they symbolize the longevity of an idea—because authenticity, at its core, is timeless.
Muzaffar states: “ My horses acquired a third dimension as they rose from the canvas into bronze torsos and bas relief. Sand cast from Moradabad drew me into metalwork equestrian buckles and leather belts. I called them ‘Barak’ after my horse which I acquired the same year Barak Obama became president of the USA, from the Dewa fair near Lucknow.This limited edition is something I wish to share with those who love art and horses across the globe!’
Mosaic series
The mosaic series are scattered throughout both floors and they create subtle punctuations in his love for creating both abstract as well as horse head intensities in varied colour tones.
For Muzaffar, voice is an unequaled portal to the soul and the supreme silence that it creates is his elixir for those moments.At his studio at Kotwara, when you gaze at him silently painting with his Salukis stretched out in graceful grandeur their long limbs creating an anatomical aura of canine sublimation you know that everything in his creation is about subtle signatures woven into the fragments of silent lyricism.
Calligraphic Modernist
Muzaffar’s calligraphic series on the top floor see his love for the script and his odyssey as a calligraphic modernist.He quotes Hazrat Ali and says: “The beauty of writing is the tongue of the hand and the elegance of thought.”
He combines calligraphic abstraction and atmospherics that reflect his own thinking about universal ideas and experiences. In his paintings populated with calligraphic arches and elements of script, spirited forms unfold, unspool, and reveal themselves over time. He explores relationships between contour, shape, language and matter. Intuition and discovery lie at the center of the artist’s approach to mark making, and his paintings are invested in a kind of excavation, in which he carves out an archival space around and through contours. A subtle mystery resides in the core of each of these works— this essence is what guides him towards different forms in his painting process, leading him to a sort of unseen yet deeply felt inner, sacred truth that defies easy articulation .
Contemporary Calligraphy
Applying calligraphy as the main element of his works, Muzaffar represents the continuation of an artistic movement which sought to leave its mark by combining traditional techniques into a modern artistic form.
Utilizing his knowledge of graphic arts to create immersive paintings ranging from small to large, these works, unlike traditional calligraphy, can be divided into two categories: fragmented calligraphy-paintings and weaving in the eternal alphabet.
Sculpting Horses
Muzaffar’s bronze sculptures embody his passion for wild horses, often a subject in his paintings. For him, horses should remain free, untamed, and unburdened by saddles, symbolizing the natural harmony between man and nature.These sculptures echo ecological themes, speaking to the intricate balance between humans and the environment.
Muzaffar’s horse sculptures concentrate on mass and detail, with the horse’s heads drawing the viewer’s attention to the underlying elements. The still, curvaceous nuances formed by the recesses add to the sculptures’ sense of dynamism.
The genesis of a unique method of controlling form in space. Ultimately, Muzaffar’s humble yet evocative modelling techniques culminate in a new vocabulary of compositional clarity, transforming figurative ideals into a tangible reality.
Four portraits of Zooni the unfinished film
Of deep insight and a mood of elegiac nostalgia is the Zooni room on the top floor. Four portraits of Zooni tell us of the film that was unfinished starring Dimple Kapadia and Vinod Khanna. The frames designed by Muzaffar himself are old time creations that draw you into their maw.
The photographs on the wall from his suitcase of archives are black and white portraits of the characters as well as four landscapes. The carpeted room with kilns and the musical instrument all create a Kashmiriyat rare and resonant. Muzaffar Ali’s unreleased film Zooni (1988), starring Dimple Kapadia and Vinod Khanna, revolves around the 16th-century Kashmiri poet Habba Khatoon, has beenrestored by the Film Heritage Foundation and this room pans out like a poignant elegy of portraits that present a flashback.
IMAGES : KOTWARA STUDIO
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