SAIM’s debut show by Saim Ghani presented the brand’s first collection within a space which was both ‘home’ and ‘shrine’. ‘Home’ because it was mapped around a constellation of poignant memories from his life, and ‘shrine’ since its arrangement and references called to the Navagraha deities. Their gravitational pulls have been felt by Saim all his life. For this collection, he created a mythopoeia of fashion. Here, the outfits are stitched via myth and fabric, an experience which intensified as one moved through the house, surveying the installations titled Surya, Chandra, Mangal, Buddh, Brihaspati, Shukra, Shani, Rahu and Ketu as Kavach. The symbolic representations are bare yet piercing, and the story of life, the mythopoeia of Saim’s own creative power developing and growing, ties into the vast cosmological universe, which is an inseparable part of India’s shared cultural roots.
(L–R) Saim Ghani’s interpretations of (L) Brihaspati and (R) Chandra translate planetary mythology into intimate symbols of protection, memory and personal cosmology.
In this collection, Saim has sublimated the experiences of childhood, the memories of growing up in Kolkata, and the varied pressures posed by social and religious identities into a collection that is wearable art. To enter the house is to become Saim, to see in the amputated toe the resistance towards limiting experiences and to emerge stronger, more fortified. In an immersive space built entirely around his subjective experience of a singular, ongoing life, Saim manages to escape solipsism by seeing the universal. The cosmological, in fact. The planets shaping his destiny, whose powers he feels in his creative being, affect us all. And that is where we connect with what he has created.
Through (R) Shukra and (L) Mangal, Saim Ghani interprets the evolving cosmological mythopoeia.
Saim Ghani’s debut collection turns memory and mythology into deeply personal wearable forms.
The clothes embody the pluriversality of life. The silhouettes challenge and disturb the everyday the way planetary motions can disrupt a stagnant time. In the clothing, the finer constructions and patterns become more important, the gathering entropy making them fit to be passed on as heirlooms.
Through sound, scent, ritual and cloth, the artist built a deeply personal cosmology.
The opening of the presentation, with the sound of a conch being blown, was both the sound of Saim’s childhood and the resonation of the cosmic Om, once again binding the personal and universal together. The dhunuchi, the bhog, the sound, the smell, and sartorial all came together to pervade each sense and spirit with the energies of Navagraha. Even the mannequins in this sacred space embodied the Goddesses if they were to descend in our contemporary age. Every inch, every object was intensified with meaning and by the time one got to view the clothes they had accrued far more interpretative potential than the mere wearable or fashionable. Be it Ketu’s detachment and freedom, or Rahu’s shadowy drive for ambition and power; Brihaspati’s homage to his mentor Anamika Khanna, whose guidance planted him in this pursuit or Shani’s propelling blockages; Saim has integrated an entire cosmology within his creative practice. A blend of the very real, very human, with the enigma of the mythological.
SAIM’s Navagraha at Art & Charlie unfolded as an immersive meditation on identity, ritual and becoming.
The event celebrated the coming together of SAIM as art and SAIM as fashion at Art & Charlie at Bandra, co-conceptualised by Devika Narain and Company. Tracing its beginning to the sketches the five-year-old Saim made to his coming of age, juggling identities of being a Muslim growing around cultural practices in Kolkata, the collection, Navagraha, encapsulates, even celebrates the nine foundational pillars of Saim’s journey, culminating in these new beginnings.
Words by Ayesha Suhail.
