Selected Works

Aicon is pleased to announce Healing Wounds, the first solo exhibition of Veer Munshi (b. 1955, Srinagar, Kashmir) in New York. Forced to leave Kashmir in 1990 following the rise of Wahhabi radicalism, Munshi settled in Delhi, where he has since established himself as an artist whose political works depict the anguish of displacement from home and separation from one’s culture. The works on display also highlight the artist’s incorporation of traditional Kashmiri crafts like papier-mâché and Kari-e-Kalamkari in contemporary practice.

Healing Wounds builds upon Munshi’s earlier series, Shrapnel, to create what the artist calls an aesthetics of counter-violence. The monochromatic forms in Shrapnel were based upon the fragments of bombs, cars, and buildings following eruptions of extreme violence both in Kashmir and abroad; coiled springs, broken pipes, and jagged metal debris float in all directions around people in various states of distress. For Healing Wounds, Munshi stitches these shrapnel fragments together to create delicate, almost lace-like backdrops for finely detailed polychrome paintings. The jagged edges are softened and yet remain visible—the wounds are healing, not healed.

The hand-painted surfaces of Munshi’s artworks contain a multitude of motifs. There are images of the medieval city of Srinagar, men and women floating in wooden boats, animals running and flying through fields of flowers, a Pandit reading under a tree, Hindu gods, and swirls of paisley. In earlier paintings, Munshi showed overturned houseboats and neglected gardens in harsh and dark colors. In Healing Wounds, Munshi has flipped the boats right-side-up and restored nature. The hollow and anguished faces of earlier figures are now at peace.

While there is a distinctly Kashmir visual vocabulary and handicraft in Munshi’s work, the artist is concerned with communicating broader issues of migration, partition, and division: “Migration as displacement for political or economic reasons, partition as the division of what had once been the same land, and division for religious, sectarian, or ideological reasons.” By incorporating images from other regions of conflict like Afghanistan and Pakistan, Munshi’s art becomes less about a specific event and more about the broader issues of displacement and exile.

The central work in Healing Wounds is a life-sized shrine lined with small coffins. For Munshi, “Qayaam-gah (Resting Place) is a deeply evocative and layered installation building upon my earlier work from the Kochi Biennale. The intricate latticework on the windows, inspired by the joinery patterns from Sufi shrines, introduces a mystical element that invites both introspection and a tactile curiosity. The idea of peering through the windows to glimpse something enigmatic enhances this sense of the unseen, further deepening the spiritual undertone. The absence of a visible door suggests themes of transcendence or inaccessibility, perhaps hinting at the metaphysical or the boundary between the material and the immaterial. Meanwhile, the inclusion of caskets with skeletons painted in traditional papier-mâché material introduces a dual narrative of fragility and permanence, linking cultural heritage with existential reflection.” Viewers are encouraged to enter the dirt-lined shrine and allow themselves time to reflect upon the human cost of radicalism.

Papier-mâché painted skeletons are also featured in the restaging of Munshi’s 2017 installation, We’re inside the fire, looking for the dark. Named after a line from Agha Shahid Ali’s poem, ‘The Country Without a Post Office,’ Along with Ali, the work celebrates six of Kashmir’s most famous poets: Lal Ded, Ghulam Ahmed Mahjoor, Allama Iqbal, Saadat Hasan Manto, Dinanath Nadim. Each is represented as a skull perched atop a transparent pedestal. Lining the wall are headphones playing the poems transcribed on the accompanying wall panels. The installation asks how the poetic voice reaches beyond everyday language to convey the unfathomable.  

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