Defining himself as a textile artist, Kashif Nadim Chaudry’s current practice is concerned with a search for the idea of the ‘Sacred’ and all its entrapments. Playing with the traditions and ceremonies of his own Pakistani Muslim background, as well as investigating a further marginalised identity as a British born gay man, Nadim’s search for the sacred raises questions around adornment, sexuality and the performances of religious and cultural ritual.
His most recent solo show at New Art Exchange ‘Even the Animals’ was a spectacle, a performance frozen in time. Referencing the solemnity of the congregation at mass or bejewelled wedding guests admiring their bride, Nadim’s fantastical sculptural beasts enacted a surreal vision of a broken church.
Coming from a family heritage were textiles and tailoring have played a fundamental role, craftsmanship and the sensuality of cloth are defining features of Nadim’s working practice. A degree in textiles has very much focused his creativity around the importance of materiality and as he asserts: “The heart of my practice lies with the working, shaping and moulding of physical ‘stuff’.”
What makes a space or ritual sacred? What shapes, forms and colours are appropriate for such a task? Nadim is fascinated by these concerns, especially, if positioned on the outside looking in, in the vein of the sacrilegious. Exploring notions of the mysterious and monumental, arguably aspects of the sacred, also inform his work, and provide a visual dialectic with the secular.
Kinetic art is the latest aspect of Nadim’s practice and one which he intends to explore with a new body of work. Drawing inspiration from his large family network and focusing upon growing up in this diasporic culture, Nadim intends to make the dance of relating and of being shaped by family, an explicit feature. He has always considered previous works, whether sculpture, drawing or mixed media, as individual static pieces which fit together, forming a greater narrative. However the main thrust and excitement of his next new body of work, lies in the challenge of making family politics and relationships much more overt, through the physical movement and interaction of several pieces.
Working around the title: ‘Mother / Maker says welcome to the family!’ Nadim’s vision for these new pieces includes a series of sewing machines through which fabric moves and is shaped, in the form of a mechanical conversation. In this way fabric is seen as a metaphor for the self, a skin to be shaped and moulded. A further aspect of this new visual vocabulary will be landscapes composed of scissors and showers of threaded needles, both of which, will be animated to perform their respective functions of cutting and piercing fabric. Central to this body of work is the journey of cloth, from the ‘beginning’ to the ‘end’ and to show and explore the ways in which this ‘virgin ground’ can and has been manipulated.