Heartiest thanks to @the_packet and @serendipityartsfestival #saf2023 please do visit the show Holy Flux where 13 artist from India, Pakistan , Srilanka, Dubai , Singapore and Palestine are showing their works .
#serendipityartfestival #holyflux #art #2023
Syed Ali Sarvat Jafri’s practice is one of preservation and resistance to cultural erasure. Hailing from Faizabad, the district renamed Ayodhya in 2018, he collects 17th-century Lakhori bricks from demolished sites, restoring and preserving them as material archives of a disappearing world .
Faizabad was once a flourishing centre of Islamic visual culture, with grand monuments and palatial houses built by the Nawabs in the 17th century. The city’s architectural heritage included mosques, tombs, and dargahs that stood as living witnesses to its cosmopolitan past . Among these was the Babri Masjid, constructed in 1527, which was demolished in December 1992 . Today, many of these structures lie in ruin, neglected, dismantled, or overwritten by political forces that promote selective memory .
Jafri walks through the city gathering Lakhori bricks scattered like waste, the very bones of this architectural past. Each brick is a fragment of memory, a silent witness to lives and histories that refuse disappearance . In his sculptures, he reassembles these fragments, breathing new time into what was lost .
In Home?, Jafri’s works stand as material archives of homes that no longer exist. They remind us that when a home is destroyed, by war, by urbanisation, by politics, something more than bricks is lost. Yet in their preservation, something also persists: memory, grief, and the quiet insistence that what was erased still matters.
Method at ARCO Madrid 2026
Booth 9OP13
Home?
Curated by Sahil Arora
Home is a paradox: the sanctuary we long for, yet a promise increasingly dismantled. War reduces houses to rubble, urbanisation erases neighbourhoods, and even where structures remain, privacy grows fragile.
At Method’s booth in the Opening section of ARCO Madrid, four artists reflect on home as a space that is porous, watched, and contested, yet still shaped by tenderness and memory.
At the centre, Sajid Wajid Shaikh’s site-specific installation reflects on displacement and the fragile social structures that hold communities together.
Through the cracks of the installation appears Ammama Malik’s veiled female figure, reflecting on the negotiation between visibility and concealment.
Syed Ali Sarvat Jafri’s sculptures, made from 17th-century lakhori bricks salvaged from demolished sites in Faizabad, act as material archives of monuments that no longer stand—a quiet resistance to cultural erasure.
At the entrance, Shamir Iqtidar’s intimate paintings of young people in Pakistan capture quiet moments of affection that cannot unfold freely in public, gesturing toward the comfort and safety home is meant to provide.
Together, the works assemble a fragile architecture of home: where walls erode, the gaze persists, and memory continues to hold its ground.
ARCO Madrid, Opening Section curated by Rafael Barber Cortell and Anissa Touati. @feriaarco
Method goes to Madrid. We’re delighted to be part of ARCO Madrid’s opening section curated by Anissa Touati and Rafa Barber Cortell.
As always, our booth presents a thoughtful curation rather than just a random selection of works.
Home? Curated by Sahil Arora
Home is a paradox; a promised sanctuary of safety and freedom, yet increasingly eroded by the forces that surround it. War reduces homes to rubble, urbanisation erases neighbourhoods and the histories they hold, and the pervasive gaze of surveillance follows us inside what was meant to be private. At Method’s booth for ARCO Madrid 2026, four artists trace this broken promise. Sajid Wajid Shaikh’s fractured concrete grill exposes vulnerability pushing through structures meant to be permanent; Shamir Iqtidar’s intimate paintings reveal affection surviving under the watch of prying eyes; Ammama Malik’s veiled figure occupies the unseen margins where women navigate constraint and defiance; and Syed Ali Sarvat Jafri’s sculptures, built from salvaged Lakhori bricks, carry the weight of homes and histories that refuse erasure. Together, they construct a vision of home as it truly is today: fragile, watched, contested, yet still a site where tenderness and memory persist.
Method x ARCO Madrid
Booth 90P13
Artists on view :
Ammama Malik
Sajid Wajid Shaikh
Shamir Iqtidar
Syed Ali Sarvat Jafri
Poster by Sajid (@46and2.co )
Feeling deeply grateful to share that my work has been collected by @kadistkadist for their collection.
I’m truly at a loss for words to express my gratitude to @methoddelhi , whose unwavering belief, dedication, and tireless efforts made it possible for this work to reach such a meaningful milestone.
Thank you for standing by the vision and carrying it forward with such care and commitment.
Hats off @synapsequence@shaleenwadhwana@anicamann
Syed Ali Sarvat Jafri comes from Faizabad, now renamed Ayodhya—a political act of erasure and rewriting of history. Once a thriving city under the Nawabs, its monuments and palatial houses shaped his earliest memories of space, art, and belonging. Today, these structures stand neglected, crumbling by design as the ruling regime promotes one history while silencing another.
For Jafri, this erasure is personal. His maternal home, inherited from Nawabi ancestors, once alive with calligraphy and grandeur, now bears the scars of lime-washed walls and forgotten inscriptions. Across the city, fragments of monuments are reduced to rubble, sold cheaply as waste. He collects these discarded lakhori bricks—silent witnesses to a disappearing world—as acts of remembrance and resistance.
His practice confronts the politics of ruins: the deliberate neglect, destruction, and rewriting of cultural memory. By salvaging fragments, Jafri reassembles grief into form, giving voice to what is being buried, and holding space for resistance against the violence of forgetting.
Syed has two series’ of works on view as part of our current exhibition The Parliament Is Now In Session.
1. Fighting For Existence (Gate Series - Set of 8) : Lakhori Bricks (17th Cen), Cement on view at Method Kala Ghoda, Mumbai
2. Half Lakhori Series (Set of 36) : Lakhori Bricks (17th Cen), Iron, on view at Method Delhi
The exhibition in both cities continues until 21st September.
The Parliament Is Now In Session Opened today at Method Mumbai , Kala Ghoda following vibrant Art Night Thursday. Its Delhi chapter will be open on 17th August , kindly do visit the show if around Mumbai / Delhi .
