shemza.digital #17 - Clock Tower, Sardar Market, Jodhpur, 2025
Aphra Shemza
Materials: Fluorescent Perspex, ultraviolet lights, black powder coated steel frames, wire and fixings
Dimensions: Site specific
Commissioned for Jodhpur Arts Week 1.0 by the Public Arts Trust of India with support from British Council India and curated by Sakhshi Mahajan.
Aphra Shemza's site-specific installation brings the abstract art of her grandfather, Anwar Jalal Shemza (1928–1985), into dialogue with her own contemporary practice. The work reinterprets the wall and gate motifs of Anwar Jalal Shemza's City Walls series, drawing inspiration from Islamic architecture and the traditional jaali—the perforated stone lattice characteristic of South Asian architecture. Shemza combines these inherited forms with geometric patterns observed in Sardar Market and Ghanta Ghar, creating a work rooted in both family legacy and place.
Historically, jaalis served both aesthetic and climatic purposes, casting intricate shadows while regulating light and airflow. Shemza reimagines this interplay through light, colour and visual rhythm. Using fluorescent Perspex illuminated by ultraviolet light, she evokes the patterned luminosity and quiet geometry of the jaali, translating an architectural tradition into a contemporary sculptural installation.
The work becomes a meeting point between ancestral influence and local identity, exploring how geometry, light and making can carry memory across generations while creating new connections between culture, place and contemporary experience.