The Iranian artist Tooraj, like Herbert Grammatikopoulos, used the photographic medium to translate the specificity of his artistic experience in the given space. While Herbert negotiated with the immediate and the existential, Tooraj’s work was primarily motivated by a conceptual framework to re-locate the shared cultural and spiritual assimilations between Iran and Kashmir. With a reference to the golden age of the Valley when the Sufi order replaced the religious determinism with the transcendental mysticism, he sought his visual testimony by visiting the shrines and khanqahs of the great seers of Persia. His methods involved a meticulous labour in Photoshop, virtually kneading the photographic image into the desired effect, which is a real possibility with digital art.

By means of digital intervention, Tooraj created allegorical appropriations by juxtaposing the imaginary portraits of the Sufi seers canonized by the famous Persian masters like Reza Abbasi and Behzad with the architectural interiors of the shrines alluding to that specific era. The selected images went through a rigorous editing process and the final printouts were hanged on the branches of the chinar tree. Seven photographs showing the seven portraits, juxtaposed with the local architectural motifs, found a fitting space on the branches of the chinar standing sentinel in the centre of the site. This photo­installation, which he titled Seven Boughs of the Chinar, makes a symbolic reference to the 700-year-old cultural/ historical memory. Tooraj speaks of his significant use of ‘seven’ by referring to the various sources from historical, coincidental to the spiritual.

“Seven hundred years ago, great Sufis and Sages such as Seyyed Bu/bu/ Shah Sohrevardi and Amir Seyyed Ali Hamedan, along with seven hundred Sufis migrated to Kashmir. And interestingly the Chinar in centre of the garden had seven boughs. The number seven has also an esoteric/ holy significance.”

Tooraj’s thematic position and a well defined formal execution created an interactive space for a culturally specific communication resurrecting the good old times in the present politically violent landscape. One could sense a metaphorical relation between the technical process of editing the images by means of diffusing or layering the shafts of virtual colors to elucidate the image of a rich and peaceful past, and the history of Kashmir smudged and submerged by the layers of oppressive regimes.