The Healing – 2010
37 min
Beach Luxury Hotel – Karachi
In Islam and in Hinduism, a baby’s head is shaved seven days after its birth to protect it from evil. Referencing this ritual, Amin asked people close to him to help perform a vulnerable performance in which his head was shorn. Amin presented The Healing at the Beach Luxury Hotel in Karachi at an event honoring Ali Imam (1924-2002), a pioneering Karachi gallerist who was both a colleague and friend of Amin’s mother and father. For this, a man carried Amin’s inert body through the audience as another man bearing two lit copper torches followed. Amin wore severe black while the two men attending to him were attired in saffron robes and necklaces of copper set with shards of green glass. The man carrying Amin gingerly laid him in the lap of Rukaiya Adamjee, who, dressed in white, sat alone on a spot-lit chair within a circle of red rose petals. Nearby, a third man, also in saffron robes, and wearing a tall conical headpiece of copper, sat before a computer and performed an electronic composition. Rukaiya, a dear friend of Amin’s whose mother was also a confidant of Amin’s mother, tenderly shaved his head with a buzzing razor, handing his hair to the two men who had ceremoniously brought him forward. They gathered it in earthenware vessels found throughout Pakistan before burning it in the flames of the torches. His head denuded, a bereaved Amin slowly rose and danced before Rukaiya, who opened her arms, seeming to both protect and release him.