Fiza Khatri

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Return to Water, 2024
Oil on canvas
182.8 x 182.8 cm each

Return to Water is a series of paintings on Gharial crocodiles, a critically endangered species from South Asia preserved as specimens in the collection of the Yale Peabody Museum, where the artist lived and studied. This work addresses the objectification and isolation of Gharial subjects, ideas of containment, and bearing witness to non-beings through the act of observational painting. The artist notices that, in the Natural History Museum, the Gharial crocodiles are preserved in jars stacked on shelves, that they ‘have been completely severed from their environment and held in an eternally suspended space where their bodies are not allowed to decompose or return to the earth.’ They constitute figures severed from their environments, denoting the colonial impulse to capture, isolate, and categorize bodies labeled as the ‘other.’ Through a visual language that combines airbrushed atmospheres with the tactile qualities of a paintbrush, the artist attempts to restore the crocodile’s place in nature by reintegrating the animals into fictitious ecosystems featuring landscape and figurative elements from a sacred habitat in Pakistan. Return to Water ultimately offers a fantasy of repair through the act of witnessing and pictorial intervention. 

Fiza Khatri (b. 1992) is an artist from Karachi, Pakistan, who shapes their artistic expression around the principles and dynamics of feminist and queer space formation within Pakistan. Their art delves into how individuals relate to themselves, others, and the community, heavily influenced by South Asian poetic traditions and sacred ecological beliefs. Their work portrays intimate portraits and communal scenes, highlighting the interconnectedness of human and non-human inhabitants.