This view is from the Hassanbad area of Srinagar, where Fayaz Jan, the craftsman Soi has worked with since 2014, is based. The artisans that reside here belong largely to the Shia community that clusters around the Hassanabad Imambara, where they pray, an important Shia site that dates to the late 19th century. It is located to the northeast of Srinagar, adjacent to the Hazratbal road that connects the city to the Hazratbal Shrine.

Over the years, Soi has walked in the area behind the Imambara, often resting at the ghat, upon the stairs that lead down to the canal. Through most of the year, this area remains secluded and quiet. In summer, a natural spring nearby becomes a small pool for the local children, who splash around within its bricked circular basin.

Gradually, this landscape became familiar to him. It represented an entanglement with the area, its society, and its history. The area is home to Shia craftsmen that paint motifs typical of the region upon papier-mâché objects that are ubiquitous within the craft industry of Kashmir. These motifs and papier-mâché material themselves can be traced back to Central Asia and Iran. Sufi preachers, such as Mir Sayyid Ali Hamdani (1312–1385 CE), spread these techniques as they passed through the region, preaching in the belief that keeping one’s hands busy kept one closer to God.

To the far right of this view, a speck on a hill is the Shankaracharya temple, one of the oldest temples in Srinagar dedicated to Shiva. Kashmiri Shaivism dates back centuries, originating in around 800 AD. Buddhism dates back even further.

The protagonist of this work is a tree Soi had stumbled across in the Bergen Forest situated north of Amsterdam while in a residency at the Luceberthuis, and whose image has appeared across his works in varying formal registers.

The dune landscape of Bergen became a space for soliloquy and while walking across it one day he stumbled across this strangely shaped oak tree. Around the same time, the invasion of Ukraine was unfolding, and Soi began adding images circulating the media to his growing archive of imagery. One caught his attention; a photograph shot by the American photographer Tyler Hicks. It depicted a haunting visual of a fallen Russian soldier against a grey winter landscape, his body partially covered by the falling snow. The framing was painterly, alluding to the Spanish artist Francisco Goya (1746–1828 CE) and his etchings, The Disaster of War (Los Desastres de la Guerra), a series of 82 prints created between 1810 and 1820, which serve as an important reference for the artist. 

Eventually, he decided to pixelate the media image and paint it as a background against which the tree is rendered in silverpoint. A circular window allows a view into a miniature world constructed by Soi, wherein he translates this image from the media, which he considers one of the landscapes we inhabit—albeit a virtual one—allowing it to become a background for the tree, which points to yet another landscape, that of the physical world in which we live. Thus different registers of figuration are sutured together in the translation of imagery from disparate sources into a personal narrative.