The charbagh, a garden of symbolism mirroring paradise, lies at the heart of this show. We grow this garden with remains - postindustrial metal scrap, discards and found objects. It blooms as a fragile promise of a world remade with tenderness and care to survive the fraught times of the present. Today seems fractured but when we look back at history, we find a continuum of brokenness, exploitation, corruption. The Mughal charbagh once held space for leisure, pleasure, poetry and politics. Over time manicured lawns replaced orchards, trees were felled and lovers were barred from these communal spaces. Conversation and poetry gave way to stifled opinions and much of its plurality vanished.

Using a language of flowers to write stories of desolation, we follow in the footsteps of the 18th century poet Mir Taqi Mir. Just as he found it within him to write of beauty in spite of the destruction that surrounded him, so blooms this garden, slowly, steadily, in spite of it all. Watered by tears of love and lament it mourns the loss of ecologies and histories, grieving what has been lost to time, yet awaiting what is to come.

Gul, our garden of symbolism unfolds in four parts: the inner garden of the self, the physical garden of the world, the ideal, utopian garden of a plural, humane future, and a garden of verse. Parterres glint with breath. Dragons lie in guard around a pool of longing. Flowers whisper in encoded languages. Altars rise out of ashes. Vaults burst with rebellion’s iron roses. A pavilion of jagged metal is erected to look over fields of steel poppies that bloom in remembrance. The garden watches; it is our witness. It carries the seeds of hope, beauty, and humanity for the future.

The cultivation of the garden is not a nostalgic longing for a return to paradise but a blueprint for survival in a hardened world. Let your eyes walk this garden, let your tongue find its language. This is a site of longing and survival.