Tazkiyah | a cleansing ritual

Tazkiyah | A Cleansing Ritual, a sculptural installation brought to life by Zunera Rashid’s performance. The piece was part of the show Aaj aur Kal | Today/Tomorrow for the inaugural ceremony of the Karachi Biennale 2027.

I’ve been looking into the many rituals I have seen, experienced, heard of, grown up around, rituals that have existed in religion, culture, family, faith, solitude, belief, belonging. I've been thinking of the many rituals I have followed custom to, those that we have forgotten, those that we remember and those that we recreate and call our own.

I look at tazkiyah as a form of inward purification, one that is gradual and unfinished (much like ourselves). Zunera helps unfold this ritual, tending to herself as she shifts between the tiled surface, dirt-infused soap forms and the contained water bodies. As the soap softens, dissolves, changes the water texture and gathers residue on the surfaces, there is uncertainty as to what will become of it, an uncertainty the body has control over. I’m looking at cleansing as an intimate act that is intended and performed, felt with the pressure of skin against skin, water against soap, soap against skin, water against skin, instrumenting each other, shaping, wearing down and altering through the state of mind, body and soul.

Tazkiyah (a sculptural performance) found home in the Gulgee Museum in February 2026, next to the late Pakistani artist, Ismail Guelgee's calligraphy works, part of the Gulgee collection.
Performance by Zunera Rashid.