Discovering and Working with Raffic Ahamed  -  Amy Allocco

I first visited Raffic at his home in Madurai in February of 2004.  I had written to him by inland letter card some months earlier, but he was away performing the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. I had heard about Raffic’s work when visiting a Dalit advocacy foundation in Madurai whose work focuses on the rights and education of members of some of India’s lowest castes, but I had not yet seen any of his art. Raffic contacted me after his return from Mecca and invited me to his home. Finding Raffic’s house proved to be somewhat difficult as it was in a neighborhood of Madurai with which I was not familiar, but eventually I pulled up in front of Raffic’s house on my Bajaj scooter.

Once I was shown inside, Raffic’s wife offered me sweet, milky South Indian coffee and Raffic and I discussed his art training, the limited contemporary arts scene in Madurai, and the thriving one in the state’s capital of Chennai (formerly Madras) an overnight train ride or nearly 500km away.  We conversed mainly in Tamil, with the customary masala of English words sprinkled in and sometimes resorting to English phrases or fragmented sentences when we were having difficulty understanding one another.  We mostly came upon such difficulties when I was attempting to explain some of Collect World Art’s initiatives, such as fair trade practices and the sharing of royalties.  In Raffic’s experience to date copyright and issues surrounding intellectual property rights had had little meaning, and such technical vocabulary was difficult for me to explain.  But Raffic was forgiving of my linguistic blunders and overwhelmingly enthusiastic about being involved in this new kind of collaborative art venture.  His previous sales had not lent themselves to ongoing interaction.  Raffic said that he felt honored to participate in art that was about establishing and maintaining relationships, and also eager to expose his art to the critiques and market forces of the USA.

I remember clearly my first impressions of Raffic’s collages; I was immediately struck by how vastly different they were from any contemporary Indian art I had seen to date, and I was impressed by their coherence and sophistication.  I was particularly intrigued by his use of women’s faces, many of which are partially hidden or blank or somehow obscured.  And I was interested in the motif of architectural forms, including features from religious edifices like mosques, churches, and Hindu temples.  Raffic was glad to elaborate on overarching themes that emerged from his collages as well as individual elements of individual works. 

He was also willing to discuss his techniques and the practicalities of the creation of his art: for instance he told me that he did all his artwork in the very same small sitting room he and I were having coffee in.  He would daily have to clean up this space before his daughter came home from school and needed to do homework there or avoid work on days that the room needed to be used for living space.  In other words there was no place in his home that he could set up permanently as a workspace for his art, and there was no way he could afford to rent even a tiny studio elsewhere.  His art, as it were, was regularly created in the midst of his life, with little privacy or room for lingering, unfinished projects.  Space was at a premium here, and yet his art reflected nothing of these inconveniences or any sense of haste. 

I spent a lot of time at Raffic’s house that first day, and by the time I climbed aboard my scooter to travel back to my apartment on the other side of the Vaigai River I had much to think about.  Raffic was the first Muslim Tamil artist I had approached to work with Collect World Art, and I could see clear ways that his religious worldview and sentiments informed his work.  Because I usually visited Raffic’s home in the evenings, our conversations were often punctuated by the call to prayer from the nearby mosque, and Raffic would politely take his leave so that he could go and pray.  I was extremely interested in hearing about Raffic’s substantial involvement at his mosque, and about his experiences of going on the pilgrimage to Mecca with his family members and others from his community.  In a subsequent visit Raffic revealed to me that every year he teaches classes at his neighborhood mosque for people who will be going on the Hajj for the first time, using his own detailed drawings and even paintings as visual aids to demonstrate what routes pilgrims should follow, and how the holy sites relate to one another in the region’s sacred geography.  His art serves as a supporting medium for relating the rites and rituals of the pilgrimage to the sacred spaces where they are to be performed. 

I visited Raffic and his family at least once a month for the remainder of my stay in Madurai.  Sometimes he and his son visited me at my apartment, and once we met in the downtown area.  I got to know Raffic in that period of time; I got to know his wife and daughter – both of whom I became very fond – and also his elegant, learned father-in-law, who lived with Raffic’s family.  I met his niece and other members of his extended family.  And eventually they invited me to eat with them; truly a signal that they felt comfortable with me, trusted me in the inner rooms of their home, and counted me as a friend.  In many ways what and how people eat in India is a clear marker of identity.  Hospitality is generous and consummately important in India, and to be invited to share a meal in someone’s home means that you acknowledge sharing in some sort of bond with them.  And so, to be invited to partake in an ordinary meal with Raffic’s family meant that we had transcended the kind of relationship that was based on the fact that I appreciated Raffic’s art and had purchased a number of pieces.  Instead, we had shared enough of ourselves that some of our differences had truly receded and we could now sit and enjoy a meal together as friend.