The art of papier-mâché, ubiquitous to Kashmir, is actually an import, introduced to the area by Sufi preachers travelling from Iran and Central Asia over centuries. The most well-known amongst them being Shah Hamdani, who entered Kashmir in 1372 AD, and to whom the exquisite Khanqah mosque is dedicated.
These papier-mâché discs are actually composite structures. The papier-mâché work itself forms the base of the support, and this work takes months: from the rotting process that forms the material to its being laid out upon the moulds, layer after layer, until the required thickness is achieved. It must then be allowed to dry gradually and in natural sunlight. Hastening the process causes the papier-mâché to crack or warp.
Once dry, the papier-mâché base is covered with a coating of clay (collected from the River Jhelum) and chalk dust and smoothened over with a flattened stone. After which a tissue paper is glued to the work surface with local glue called saresh. Only then can work begin! However the surface is now smooth and extremely absorptive—a pleasure to paint upon.
This new body of work is in part a documentary. It looks out at the area known as Hasanaabad, just south of Nageen Lake and adjacent to the Hazratbal Road. It is a Shia enclave, with the Hassanabad Mosque being the focal point of the neighbourhood where its Shia residents gather for prayer. Located just below Nageen Lake, it is irrigated by canals and waterbodies that have become pathways for shikaras carrying vegetables to the local markets, and, in its interior, lesser developed areas, for aquaculture. It is in this neighborhood that the craftsman Fayaz Jan, who Soi has been working with for a decade now, lives.
The papier-mâché craft industry is divided, within its production cycle, along religious lines. The Sunni craftsmen first generate the pulp that is the essence of papier-mâché and then apply it upon moulds to create the decorative objects (bowls, caskets, elephants) that are ubiquitous to the industry. It is the Shia craftsmen who paint the intricate motifs upon the objects.
Over time, Soi became familiar with the neighbourhood, and its history. It is somewhat separated from the urban development of Srinagar, protected in part by the sprawling grounds of the 19th-century Hassanabad Mosque, built in an octagonal Indo-Iranian style, that leads down to the waterside ghat to its north. This kind of ghat in Kashmir is called a ‘Yaarbal’: a spot for friends to meet, and here oftentimes Soi would take a break from work with the craftsmen. It is said among locals that Mumtaz Mahal, the wife of Jehangir, bathed in this very area centuries ago.

Landscape, according to Soi, is a construction: one that denotes multiplicity. A multiplicity of viewpoints. In this ongoing series, Soi follows this instinct. Years of walking through this neighbourhood has allowed him a familiarity with its immediate landscape and its culture. And his decade of working with craftsmen has given him a sense of a familiarity with their work and their tropes. The round papier-mâché discs are now filled in with varying floral motifs that the craftsmen use within their work. On these discs the motifs are reduced in colour: they then become the backgrounds upon which Soi has painted the landscapes that he has become sensitised to over the years. They are painted en plein-air, with the craftsmen’s delicate floral motifs activating his linework that at times opposes, at times echoes and at times allows for gentle transparencies to appear.
In Hasan Abad: View of the Zabarwan Range, Soi has introduced to this problematic a pattern he came across in the Archeological Museum in Naples—Mosaic of the House of Citharist of Pompeii (second half of the 1st c. BCE). Admiring its radiating energy, Soi turned it into a shape in which the craftsmen could fill in their motifs. In its centre, a view of the Zabarwan range is drawn in silverpoint, which is visible from its Karkhana, or workshop.