n one of his novels, Spanish author Javier Marias makes the observation that we leave a part of ourselves in spaces that we inhabit, even momentarily; even pieces of furniture we use briefly. When we enter a room, we are not aware of numerous others, who have been there before us, nor when we sit on a chair, place our hands on a table, lie on a bed, are we conscious of others who may have been there before us.

Human presence is transient so that it is not practical to compile a thorough logbook of the kind. But following a prolonged stay, we do leave our mark on some objects. Some of us may remember climbing stairs of historic monuments or of ancient buildings - once sharp, now buffed with excessive use over the years. In public offices, a specific spot of the wall, a section of the door and handles often become discoloured, dirty and sticky due to the large number of hands that touch them. If you hang paintings in your living room, on removing those, you discover that the background areas has ended up being a different shade than the rest of the interior. In the formal vocabulary of printmaking, undeletable traces of previous drawings on a stone to be prepared for making and printing a new work are called the ‘ghost image.’

Amna Ilyas’s new work recalls ghosts, of mortals who registered their presence through their fingers or remains of the body, such as the hair. At her solo exhibition, Reading a Room, (September 9 to October 22, Bayt Al Mamzar, Dubai) installations and sculptures were constructed with hair or created in plaster. Ilyas has expertly found a middle ground even though there is hardly a meeting point between a substance that is extracted and cut from the human body and a factory material that has been employed for making moulds and casts of sculptures. Her sculptures and installations revealed a human existence, removed but not forgotten.

Ilyas displayed an ordinary and elementary utensil composed of interwoven hair. The rim of the bowl-like piece was uneven, ending in several strands. Another container with two horns, forged from hair, looked like the head of a goat or some sacrificial animal. Hair appeared again, now in a cluster of ant-type insects crowded close to a pair of electricity switches. Human hair also sprouted from a hole in the middle of a plaster box.

Plaster, or the Plaster of Paris – in the lingo of art – is a substitute for stone sculptures from the Greek age, the Roman era, the Italian Renaissance, and subsequent periods. Even today, plaster sculptures are polished to replicate the sheen of a marble statue or treated to look like a bronze figure. Rarely is a practising artist comfortable in showing plaster sculptures as white, blank, unsmooth surfaces except for those doing body casts. In George Segal’s sculptures and installations, you see rough and unhewn masses clustered at a bus stop, or near a gas station. These are the outer layers of actual human beings. In that way, plaster becomes a chronicle and compilation of each and every detail about the individuals who posed for the American artist. Likewise, Nausheen Saeed’s plaster casts of females for an exhibition on Women Day (March 8, 1994, Alhamra Art Gallery, Lahore) reaffirmed the presence – rather than the absence of women in a male dominated society.

In a sense, Amna Ilyas’s art is an elegy or the memories of the things past. The question is why a successful professional, with a normal family, a modern house, comfortable and contemporary living, is fabricating work that appears to be unearthed from a dysfunctional and abandoned site.

Later, Amna Ilyas made impressions of legs and other body parts in plaster to preserve the outline of the human body, subject to sagging, expanding, wrinkling, deflating or deformities. Her installations of the pairs of legs attached to the walls (from her solo exhibition, November 25-29, 2008, Rohtas 2, Lahore) suggested the contours, movement and the power of a female body.

The body is still present in Ilyas’s work, but instead of being seen, it is now sensed. The mass of hair is collected and composed in the shape of a pot, so the sculpture evokes multiple layers of existence. The human element can be seen in other work too, like light fixtures invaded by the insects made of human hair, or cabinets produced in plaster which still preserve and release the residue of human hands – hence handmade. Knobs, drawers and sides of these chests of drawers seem to have been tampered by human interaction or anticipating it.

The title of the exhibition was Reading a Room. It could equally have been Reading the Obituary for a Room. Hair is one of the last components of human body to decompose after death; so are possessions, which survive the passing away of their owners. At thrift shops, old book stalls, auction houses, you come across beautiful and delicate objects, rare publications, pieces of period furniture that became orphan after the demise of those who had lovingly collected and cared for them.

In a sense, Amna Ilyas’s art is an elegy for the things past. The question is why a successful professional, with a normal family, a modern house, comfortable and contemporary living, is fabricating works that appear to have been unearthed from a dysfunctional and abandoned site. There is furniture that you don’t want to put in your house, pieces of pottery you feel reluctant, if not repulsed, to hold. In the realm of visual art, these memento mori are sometimes created for the reason that the artist is thinking not about life, but of death; rather the life after death or the life of dead objects. How can one replicate the miracle and breathe some life into the lifeless items? Amna Ilyas’s work is on the cusp of still life and the human substance. Her art objects do not have the feel of a factory manufacture, even a studio product. They appear to have been shaped in a bedroom or living room, like raising children.

Children and art – best friends and the archenemies, simultaneously – have the same function. They extend the life of their initiator, to the next, or a number of succeeding generations. Both carry the imprint of their makers. So when we see Amna Ilyas’ earlier engraving of a small frock in a glass, titled Zainab (2019), or her sensitive plaster casts consisting the texture of a young girl’s tunic (Eerily Settings, 2021-2022), or the subtle impressions of a female-child’s dress (Imprint, 2022), it is a way of addressing the future, ensuring a longer life via the next generation. These are visuals that might have been excavated by an archaeologist from a future century.

Artists, if not only reliving in their children, survive through the body of their work; like the art of Amna Ilyas that seems to capture the timelessness in mundane activities and items, reminding one of Baudelaire who described the modern artist as “the painter of both the passing moment and everything in that moment that smacks of eternity.”

The writer is an art critic based in Lahore