The Artist as an Open Book

Artist Saba Hasan strips the book of authority, using fire and erasure to ask what meaning endures once text begins to fail

- MEDHA DUTTA YADAV

Everything in the world exists in order to end up as a book," Stéphane Mallarmé once wrote, imagining the book as a spiritual instrumentan ultimate resting place for thought and matter.

In jo gayab hai, aur hazir bhi (that which is absent but also present), at the KNMA, artist Saba Hasan carries that thought forward. The exhibition unfolds at an unhurried pace. Before the spectators are books that feel uncannily familiar: volumes dulled by time, their pages yellowed, spines softened, edges frayed from years of touch. These are not pristine carriers of knowledge but lived objects-handled, shelved, misplaced, remembered. "Coming from a family of academics, books have always been in abundance at my home. They were a natural choice of art material," says Hasan, adding that she feels comfortable working with books because of her familiarity with the content, "as well as a certain ability, I think, to abstract from it".