Harun Al Rashid Mollah’s Miniatures Place Memory At The Heart Of His Creative Practice

Miniature recreations of a child’s clothes cover fragments of Bengali poems. Incomplete lines printed on a carefully coffee-stained and outlined leaf peek from behind: “O messenger, your friends are in all ten directions/Your beloved friend spreads black tresses across the heart…”

An elegy for a beloved aunt whom he never saw, Harun Al Rashid Mollah’s ‘Remembering Ruby’ (2023) uses memory as medium and places acts of remembering at the heart of his artistic practice. Drawing inspiration from his own familial experiences, he uses found objects, old books, family photographs, yarns, threads, and other paraphernalia to create miniature pieces that seek to engage with our current intolerant and majoritarian socio-political landscape.

One of his recent works titled ‘Tears of Tolerance’ (2024) engages the demolition of Islamic schools, shrines, and monuments in Uttarakhand’s Haldwani using watercolour, pyrography, metallic colour, and textile stone on paper to create a space where dialogue could flourish and foster empathy. The piece — a set of 8 miniatures measuring 9.5 in × 9.5 in — aims to spark conversations about the erasure of specific histories from educational narratives, and the repercussions of religious monument demolitions by mobs and state machinery in recent years.

Rashid's multi-disciplinary practice brings together modern and historical mediums like embroidery, miniature painting, collaging, and alternative photography to create these pieces that confront and engage with both the personal and the political. ‘Remembering Ruby’ (2023) — a set of 20 miniatures measuring 9 in × 5 in — draws from his aunt Ruby’s brief existence on earth and stands out as the young artist's most personal work. She passed away as a young child, leaving no tangible memories behind except for her clothes which were carefully preserved by her mother, Rashid’s grandmother.

Using pages of old and damaged books he found in his grandfather’s cabinet, Rashid recreated these precious relics of the beloved child using rice paper. He layered the fragmented pages of the books to create a surface that could sustain the force of needling, drawing, writing, painting, and collaging. Then, on each page, he recreated an article of the child’s clothing like frocks, chemises, and pyjamas. The result is a haunting and powerful portrait of loss and remembrance — his only means of imagining her and feeling her presence.

“My art draws inspiration from native cultures and familiar spaces that have shaped my identity”, Rashid says. “Through my practice, I aim to bridge the gap between tradition and modernity, inviting viewers to reflect on the rich tapestry of human experiences. My practice celebrates resilience, and the suffering of everyday life, offering a window into the soul of India, a place where history and conflict coexist. I continue to explore more and push the boundaries of my artistic expression, always seeking creativity, discovery, and connection.”

Follow Harun Al Rashid Mollah here.

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