Memorial to Lost Words is a mixed-media installation where the only light comes from a table that holds reproductions of archival letters translated from Punjabi, Hindi and Urdu to English. Through folk songs, poetry and this historical archive of letters, Abidi uncovers a hidden chapter of war history where more than a million Indian soldiers served the British military in World War I. Largely erased from collective memory, these soldiers are conjured in the artist’s sound installation through intimate letter exchanges with their families back home, including descriptions of forlorn love, poverty under service to the colonial regime and struggles with death away from the homeland.
Evoking Muharram majlises, with the presentation of a darkened room and melancholic incantations, Abidi asks us to consider memorialization of soldiers who embodied the contradictions that colonial modernity imposed. These sentiments are amplified by a sung poem based on censored letters,(poet Amarjit Chandan and music composed and performed by singer Ali Aftab Saeed) and a restaging of old Punjabi folksongs sung by women a hundred years ago (resung by Ismet, Zainub and Saleema Jawad of Harsakhia). The work serves as an anti- monumental memorial that brings to the fore the forgotten sacrifice of soldiers and their written accounts, which were ignored for so long.