Description
shrouded…early spring morning from the hotel, Buddha monastery cave site, Bamiyan, Hazarajat, Afghanistan, April 17, 2008, photographic print, 20.25 x 30.5 cm.
In April 2008, Vancouver-based artist Jayce Salloum travelled with Afghan- Hazara artist Khadim Ali from Karachi, Pakistan to Kabul, Afghanistan and then overland into the Bamiyan Valley in Central Afghanistan. Of specific interest to the artists were the ruined cave sites of the c. 5th century Buddhas, destroyed by the Taliban in March 2001. The ruins of the Bamiyan Buddhas provided a site from which to examine the situation of the Hazara people, a persecuted Shi’a Muslim minority, who believe themselves to be descended from the sculptors who produced the colossal figures of the Buddha.
The image shrouded…early spring morning from the hotel, Buddha monastery cave site, Bamiyan, Hazarajat, Afghanistan from April 17, 2008 is a part of دلِ که سوز ندارد, دلِ نیست (the heart that has no love/pain/generosity is not a heart), a multi-media installation that records the destitution of current conditions in Bamiyan while reflecting on the tensions shaping an incipient modernity in Afghanistan. The installation engages a sense of the complexity of the current situation in Afghanistan, taking up themes of the possibility of resistance, hope and beauty in the context of ongoing conflict.
