Abstract
This article brings together a Muslim theologian from colonial India and a contemporary artist from postcolonial Pakistan, namely Ashraf 'Alī Thānvī and Naiza Khan, respectively. In their different yet related ways, Thānvī and Khan both repurpose the idea of “ornamental femininity.” Khan's artworks further problematize some of the key assumptions about sexual difference in Thānvī's body of work, such as “women's ruination,” feminine fragility, and chastity. Khan eschews the reduction of the feminine to the ornamental, but also embraces the transcendental possibilities of the ornamental. She thus welcomes the mediating function of ornaments, which facilitate experiences of transcendence that are essential for becoming an aesthetic subject. Khan is able to achieve this because of an internal contradiction in the logic of ornamental femininity within Thānvī's moral theological tradition. By becoming attuned to her art objects, we are in a better position to analyze how traditionalist theologians construct the idea of sexual difference in Muslim South Asia. The article also comments on Khan's more general theoretical contribution to contemporary art, which consists of highlighting the ongoing tension between our named, sexed bodies and the potentialities of flesh.
Highlights
This article brings together a Muslim theologian from colonial India and a contemporary artist from postcolonial Pakistan, namely Ashraf ‘Alī Thānvī and Naiza Khan, respectively
In a collection of drawings and sculptural objects entitled, “Heavenly Ornaments,” the contemporary London-based Pakistani artist Naiza Khan highlights the materiality of the body (Figure 1)
Khan’s art attends to historical figurations of sexual difference, the survival of women’s agency amidst local and global scenes of bloodshed, the conceptual and material interplay between power and pleasure, as well as the effects of colonial and postcolonial geopolitical designs on embodied everydayness. In addition to her artworks, her sketchbooks and diaries document her wide-ranging capacity to draw together disparate traditions of knowledge
Summary
This article brings together a Muslim theologian from colonial India and a contemporary artist from postcolonial Pakistan, namely Ashraf ‘Alī Thānvī and Naiza Khan, respectively. Khan connects “Heavenly Ornaments” to the question of sexual difference and desire in Islam, linking this body of work to the politics of “ornamental femininity” in Muslim South Asia. Khan’s “Heavenly Ornaments” enables me to analyze how certain religious discourses presuppose a complicated set of associations between women’s bodies and ornamental objects.
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