I have always had a particular admiration for Artist Masood Hussain’s work. There is something about the way he looks at Kashmir that has always stayed with me — his ability to find stories in its landscapes, its people, its memories and its silences, and then translate them onto a canvas in a language that feels unmistakably his own. His paintings have never felt like mere representations of Kashmir to me; they feel like conversations with the place itself.A few days ago, while scrolling through my phone, a message popped up with a photograph that immediately caught my attention. It was of Maqam, a newly constructed heritage house in Rajbagh, where a rather unusual exhibition was being held. The message spoke of Lal Ded’s Vaakhs being brought to life through modern art, painted on the delicate canvas of Pashmina by Masood Hussain.

I found myself looking at the photograph for a little longer than I expected.It is an unusual question, but one that becomes surprisingly meaningful when you see artist Masood Hussain’s latest body of work. Hussain has brought together two deeply recognisable elements of Kashmir’s cultural identity : Lal Ded’s poetry and Pashmina — in a series of twenty hand-painted shawls inspired by the Vaakhs of the fourteenth-century mystic poet. Created over nearly two years, the works offer an unusual interpretation of Lal Ded’s verses while placing them on one of Kashmir’s most celebrated traditional crafts.

What interests me about this project is not simply the novelty of painting Lal Ded’s poetry on........

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