From Kashmir—Hairpins and Earrings, Scarves and Sleeves

January 30, 2026

Thanks to Sabahat Ali Wani, a 2025 Fellow in Ideas, for today’s post.

Hairpins to earrings, scarves to sleeves—as a visual artist, I search for, collect, and use Kashmiri women’s clothes and accessories in my practice, primarily intending to shed light and document our lives, stories, and memories of resistance. That is at the core of my art: resistance, a medium to represent and record Kashmiri women’s narratives. But while doing so, I do not aim to depersonalise or homogenise our experiences. Rather, I want to emphasise that our struggles are personal and collective, intimate and shared, local and transnational, making compassion and solidarity inseparable from our resistance. 

In this blog, I share and write about some of my art pieces that centre upon themes of transgression and reclaiming, acts of hearing and counter-history, and re-imagining resistance. 

(1) A Kashmiri Witch’s Hairpin, Mixed Media. (featured image). (First published: The Minison Zine, Volume 4, Issue 21, July 2024.)

Last summer, I made this hairpin of Rantas, a Kashmiri witch. With a dead insect’s head on top, an elongated grey-black body and thin legs forming the pointed teeth, this hairpin signifies the macabre tales of the folkloric witch. On the clip’s body, there are embroidered flowers and a white-black thread taken from my mother’s pheran, a traditional garment. I used these two elements to depict the curse-labelling of Kashmiri women as Rantas because of their unruly, rogue, and unacceptable appearance and behaviour. But upon a closer look, a subtle feature strikes the eye: the thread’s shadow. It’s deliberately kept ‘wrong’ to symbolise the supernatural, mythical, and transcendental nature of Rantas. It’s to propose that Rantas—as an idea, a creature, a metaphor—can provide an agentic space for Kashmiri women to reclaim their bodies and psyches, and resist intrusions of abusive masculinity. It’s an attempt to invite and accept Rantas, and welcome her into our embrace.

(2) One Who Remembers and One Who Sees

Since childhood, I heard a lot of stories about loss and belonging, love and separation, abuse and survival from my grandmother, mother, aunts, and sisters. As a Kashmiri woman artist, this act of hearing has been a significant part of my practice. In the art series, Sleepless Nights, I used earrings, in part and in full, to capture how Kashmiri women remember, share, and pass on their life’s memories and stories to young girls. Specifically, in One Who Remembers and One Who Sees, both the pearls and the lower side of a jhumki, a bell earring, are used to assert that the stories of Kashmiri women mustn’t only be seen and heard, but also drawn and written as counters to the colonial, male-inked history.

(3) A Suicidal Bride and A Resting Place

On the streets, in our homes, Kashmiri women stand and lie abused, exploited, and fatigued. Being a Kashmiri woman, seeing and experiencing this everyday violence led to the making of A Suicidal Bride. A human skull, adorned with a gold headband and an earring, is charged with the statement: a Kashmiri woman is neither alive nor dead. She oscillates between life and death, living and dead. She never experiences life, nor does she escape with death. She remains in question, is questioned. Exhausted from such a plight, in hopes of rest, I then thought of and created A Resting Place. On the gold-coloured ground made from my mother’s scarf and flowers from my sister’s earrings, this place represents the love, compassion, and solidarity of Kashmiri women. It re-imagines our resistance as a departure from our exhausting lives, where we needn’t only stand up and raise our fists to the sky, but also sit down, put our heads on each other’s shoulders, and rest. 

Years back, I still remember when and why I started making art. I was nineteen, away from home for the first time. Kashmir was put under a shutdown, and I was not able to talk to my parents, siblings, or my friends. During that time, to ring in some strength and soothe my anxious nerves, I held onto the shawls and scarves that my grandmother, mother, and sisters gave me. I felt a bond, so I decided to capture and show it. I started on an instinct, a hunch of sorts, and I continue to translate that bond through my art. It sounds, speaks of resistance, and calls upon me, upon us, to imagine and create an otherwise world. Hand in hand, story to story, memory with memory—as we pass threads to each other and weave our own histories, where space for more never runs out, and hope continues to kindle.

Photos provided by Sabahat Ali Wani.