When a dead body is buried, regardless of the deceased’s deeds, it disintegrates into the ground. A few religions(including Islam and Christianity) inform about the origin of mankind in dust. Quran enlightens; “Out of it [dust] We have created you, to it We shall return you, and out of it We shall bring you out a second time.”(Al-Taha 20: 55); the Bible narrates; “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul:” (Genesis 2:7). Once created from earth, these beings shaped the idea of their creators in clay, hence numerous examples of divine figures, dating back to archaic human settlements are in unbaked or fired clay, along with stone, ivory (perhaps wood too, a material that did not last).
God, as commonly believed, is beyond human demarcation of gender; though in our diction, prayers, sermons, and pictures in cathedrals, God is man, usually an old patriarch. In a few societies practicing ancient sets of beliefs, goddesses often have a dominating role, mostly the mother goddesses (like Kali Mata). Some of these divine females in terracotta are found from the ruins of Indus Valley Civilization, and in other regions too, which are installed in the galleries of anthropological museums. Usually in spaces shared with large earthenware from the same era; items originally were produced as containers to keep water or store grains.
Nausheen Saeed’s new works, if on the one hand remind the terracotta mother goddesses, and historic earthenware, these headless female figures also resonate with the Classical Greek sculpture, Venus de Melo from the 2nd century BCE. Saeed’s female bodies are without arms and legs, and share the shape and surface of an unearthed body. While the Greek stone is a sign of beauty, both the Indus Valley Civilization figurines and Saeed’s sculpture seem witnesses of trauma and bearers of unmeasurable marks of time.
Saeed’s sculptures, fabricated with a variety of mediums and a range of techniques – appear like large humanoid terracotta pots – balanced in the softly lit clear glass cases, placed on plinths. These illustrate multi-fold roles and positions of a female in society where, besides a sign of beauty, she is also a creator of life, and a container of food. Especially the container of watery substance because before its birth she keeps the baby in her belly; and of milk since she provides the initial nutrition to a new-born. As the child comes into this world naked, Saeed’s women are also undressed, resembling raw external surfaces of earthenware, which reveal spots, scratches, cuts, crevices, and are as withered as the flesh of a mother of many kids.
The new exhibition of Nausheen Saeed is a continuation – rather the culmination of her past works; the entire aura that may be described in a term ‘Woman the Container’. In her previous art practice females were presented as full figures, or in various postures, or in segments, like heads, torsos, or a combos with other creatures. Her containers included metal milk cans; translucent plastic shopper bags; pieces of luggage covered in fabric of different prints; composed of a flower bouquet; assembled with pieces of discarded cloth. Both the female and the container share another trait: the bareness of the form.
Saeed, a few years ago, constructed raw and unhewn structures of houses, and sections of furniture belonging to a (her) house were joined to narrate the intimate recollections from the position of a woman. In our society, like all conventional ones, women are normally the maker of a house – in all senses of the word. And although they could be professionals of highest cadre in their respective fields, yet their aesthetics, care, and attention to detail turn a house – from a boys’ hostel to a habitable home.
A place that contains family, provides protection, ensures food on the table, room for rest, and inspires interaction among family members. The woman in Saeed’s art is always a selfcontained entity, not a selfish being. She goes through phases of metamorphosis: becoming a freshly baked loaf of bread, a bar of soap, turning into a bunch of roses, a shopping bag once filled with groceries, a traveling luggage packed with essential stuff before leaving one’s house, human size metal forms – the hybrid of traditional milk cans (with their chained tops) and naked female torsos.
The recent body of work offers more readings in the aesthetics of Saeed. A spectator’s eye is split between the torso of an undraped woman of battered skin, and a fragile clay pot excavated from an archaeological location. Even though the body of a female, like a man or a transgender, experiences modification with age, varies in its measurements, experiences various states of health, and (lately) could clinically be adjusted to the taste of time and to the desire of woman; but as observed by the Mexican author Carlos Fuentes; ‘from the evolution of human race to contemporary times, the process of child birth remained the same’ (except the caesarean operations, test tube babies, and the use of other genetic technologies). Likewise mother no matter if she was from 28,000 BCE or belongs to 2024 CE shares a common role, and draws a common respect. She is the giver of life.
Like water, which is crucial for existence. For humans, for other living beings, for crops, for vegetation, and for ecosystems. Necessary for life on the planet; water is a natural substance that either falls from the sky, flows in the rivers and streams, remains in ponds and lies in unmeasured reservoirs such as seas and oceans. Water existed on this planet before humans came into being. But it was sapiens who learnt to collect, and carry it from its source to their shelters. Hollow shells of vegetable and fruits might have led to shaping the primordial form of a water container. Later evolved into a jar, probably carved out of stone, or forged in baked clay. Since water has never gone out of fashion – or demand.
In that sense the earliest found terracotta jars from Mehrgarh, a site dating back to 7,000 BCE is not too dissimilar to earthen pitchers used for storing cold and clean water in a rural household of the twenty-first century. A comparison can be drawn – especially on looking at the masterfully executed figures of Nausheen Saeed – between the physique of our archaic great-great-grandmothers who lived ten thousand years ago, and present day mothers still feeding their kids.
If Saeed bridges the distance of time in her art pieces, particularly in their shapes, colours, textures, and tactility, she also shifts the boundaries of dates; by placing these sculptures in an environment, echoing an anthropological museum. These sculptures from 2025, force us to see them as historic objects: Because of their yellowed, decayed, roughened outer layers – in addition to their placement in the pristine glass cabinets – like any museum object in the world. Looking at them rekindles the experience of gazing at an ancient urn in an identical casing and awed setting. Both, a sculpture fabricated in 2025, and a piece of pottery produced in 3,000 BCE seem to be historic (one lived in a past of five thousand years, and other in the duration of a few months), represent the present in which they exist and unfold new pack of knowledge, concepts, concerns, and emotions.
The latest artwork of Nausheen Saeed conjures up another connection, in the personal history of the artist. The sculptures of females in earthen hues – remotely recall her series of small terracotta figurines from her degree show at the National College of Arts in1990 – even though the new works are hugely different in their scale, bodies, and content, yet the past is still present; like memories we possess and reside in.
