A contemporary visual interpretation of the 1001 Arabian Nights through various artworks that occur in cycles, my work is multidisciplinary and influenced by various Silk Road cultures including the Indo-Persian miniatures and Chinese painting of my multiple heritages. My current practice-led research doctorate at the Slade focuses on the 1001 Arabian Nights. Memory, Margins and Magic are the 3 chapters or phases in my research along with the nested structure of the Nights themselves. The formal nested structure of the Nights make me ask questions about the visual form of the Nights; I reimagine the Nights and their structure through books, boxes, scrolls, screens and, currently, toy theatres, to generate innovative visual interpretations of the Nights. I propose a new, visual reading of the Nights where Shahrazad the storyteller is all-powerful in that she holds the key to the entire 1001 Nights in her head, just as the artist can be all-powerful in the creation of multiple worlds and works.

The 1001 Nights, or the Arabian Nights, are a collection of 1001 stories narrated by Shahrazad to King Shahriyar over the course of 1001 nights. The collection starts with a frame tale introducing King Shahriyar who, despairing of women because his wife betrayed him, resolves to marry one woman each night and kill her the next day. As he is running out of women, Shahrazad offers herself to him as she has a plan. She tells him a series of stories that each end with a cliffhanger and flow into each other like nested Russian dolls or Chinese boxes and then merge and dissolve to the extent that he doesn’t quite know if one story is the beginning or the middle or the end of another tale. She immerses him in her worlds and he is hooked, so he can’t kill her as the stories are so interesting and he wants to hear how they continue and she survives another night to tell the tale – teaching and showing him about different ways to look at the world – until 1001 nights pass and he is a changed and humbled man. She becomes his queen and is mother to his children who were also born during the 2 years, 8 months and 28 days of the consecutive 1001 nights.

The big number of 1001 allows me to think about ways of timekeeping. Memory sees me bring the framework of the Nights to life as architecture in my Memory Palace; Margins lets me explore various processes and motifs in the world of the Nights including the colourful characters in the tales, manuscript painting, Islamic bindings, magic trick boxes, beautiful tools and brushes, a series of paper toy theatres, muqarnas, weaving, obsolete technologies such as the Chinese typewriter and a physical manifestation of the Nights which for me is tightrope walking. Magic is the upcoming phase and includes talismanic shirts and artworks made from breastmilk. Finally I would like to follow in the tradition of thinking about the thousand and second night and perhaps throw an updated Poiret-style party for our times, also to celebrate the culmination of what is proving to be one of the longest practice-led research doctorates ever…

Related links

Vaishali Prazmari website.
Toy theatres via The Perfect Brush.
Brushes via The Perfect Brush.

Supervisors

Primary supervisor: Sharon Morris
Secondary supervisors: Sophie Page (Dept of History), Kate Bright