Sheherezade Alam was renowned Pakistani-Canadian potter who drew lessons of life from the maati (clay) that she worked with.Courtesy of the Family
Invariably surrounded by people, Sheherezade Alam always stood out in a crowd. Dressed in a swirl of vibrant textiles, her long hair parted in the centre and tied into a braid with a colourful paranda (a hair accessory), her large, expressive eyes lined with kohl, she unfailingly spoke with a wide smile and a generous laugh, drawing everyone into her orbit.
A renowned Pakistani-Canadian potter who drew lessons of life from the maati (clay) that she worked with, and elevated a practice considered a folk craft into an esteemed artform, Ms. Alam had none of the airs that one might expect of such an accomplished artist.
“My mother always just connected with people. She was somebody who would talk to everybody about anything, and get their whole life story and know the names of their children. … It wasn’t any kind of pretense. She was genuinely interested in people. I nicknamed her Maximal Mama because she was just this force of nature, this exuberant personality,” said Nurjahan Akhlaq, her daughter, in a phone interview from Lahore, Pakistan.
After dividing her time between Canada and Pakistan for 15 years, Ms. Alam moved back to Lahore in 2007 to care for aging parents and stayed on. She created and exhibited new work, and eventually founded an arts school for children in 2010. She was diagnosed with kidney failure in 2015 and died on May 18 from complications of end-stage renal disease. She was 73.
Even her scheduled visits to a public hospital in Lahore for dialysis treatments were festive, said Nurjahan, 43, a visual artist and filmmaker. True to form, her mother would be dressed to the nines, matching her self-designed outfits with earrings and bangles. The Urdu word shaukeen, which loosely translates to a person who revels in their interests, applied perfectly to her, she said.
After dividing her time between Canada and Pakistan for 15 years, Ms. Alam moved back to Lahore in 2007 to care for her aging parents and stayed on.Courtesy of the Family
“Everybody would come and say salaam or hello to her, from the sweepers to the nurses, to all the people who were having dialysis at the same time. And she’d just hug them. It’s like there was a party going on. … It was just who she was in a very pure state,” she said.
Born in Lahore, on June 19, 1948, Ms. Alam came from a self-described bourgeois family. Her father, Mahmood, was a businessman and a well-known tennis player, who competed at Wimbledon twice. Her mother, Surayya, was a prominent educator who had established the famous Montessori-style Toddler’s Academy.
A shy middle child, Ms. Alam attended the Sacred Heart Convent and the Kinnaird College for Women. It was after she enrolled at the prestigious National College of Arts (NCA) in 1966 that she truly came into her own and rebelled against certain social mores. Her parents likely enrolled her there to round out her education rather than prepare her for a career in the arts, Nurjahan said, but she became fascinated with the bohemian life that surrounded her. For the first time, she met a wide cross-section of people outside the privileged bubble in which she had grown up.
“It was the age of the Aquarius,” Ms. Alam said in a 2019 interview on the digital talk show Speak Your Heart with Samina Peerzada. “We were all relooking at … the Vietnam war, and U.S. intervention. It was a very exciting [time].”
It was also at the NCA that Ms. Alam learned about Pakistan’s Indigenous art traditions through her peers and mentors. She first considered textiles, but ended up in the institution’s ceramics department when she noticed an empty classroom full of potter’s wheels.
Pottery became her calling, and she was encouraged to flourish in the form by Zahoor ul Akhlaq, one of her artistic mentors, whom she married in 1971. When they met, Mr. Akhlaq was becoming recognized as one of Pakistan’s pioneering artists, known for his paintings and sculptures, as well as his work in design and architecture.
Pottery became Ms. Alam's calling and she was encouraged to flourish in the form by Zahoor ul Akhlaq, one of her artistic mentors, whom she married in 1971.Courtesy of the Family
Ms. Alam’s parents didn’t initially see him as a good match for their daughter, though, because they disapproved of his profession and his middle-class background. They tried to end the courtship by sending Ms. Alam to Paris for six months. However, the city of love was also a hotbed of revolution at the time. Ms. Alam returned with even more determination to get married, with Mao’s Little Red Book in her hand, and the teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurti in her head.
Her family reconciled with the decision, and the couple moved into an annex on the family compound in Lahore. The newlyweds repurposed an old United Nations trailer without wheels into an extended living area that came to be known as the Box. It became a cultural hub where artists and friends would drop in and occasionally organize exhibitions.
Ms. Alam graduated from the NCA with distinction in 1972. Inspired by Japanese and Scandinavian traditions, her thesis project was a dinner set that borrowed from Finnish pottery but incorporated Indigenous Pakistani designs. Her daughters, Jahanara and Nurjahan, were born in 1974 and 1979, respectively.
In 1977, she set up Studio 90, turning a shed and chicken coop in her parents’ compound into a space to create and exhibit pottery works. She held her first solo exhibition at the Pakistan Arts Council in Karachi the following year. In 1983, she was awarded a British Council scholarship and studied at the West Surrey College of Art & Design.
Although she had considered making functional mass-produced pottery, she ultimately became a champion of Indigenous pottery traditions from Pakistan, also drawing on practices from other parts of Asia.
“She took something that was considered a craft and took it to a level where it was about formalism. It was very sculptural,” Nurjahan said, noting her influences from China, Japan and the ancient Indus Valley Civilization. “She took subcontinental forms like the dome, the surahi [a clay pot used to store water], or the diya [oil lamp] and used them in her work.”
Sheherezade Alam, left, with her father Mahmood Alam, brother Shaban (brother), mother Surayya, and brother Asad.Courtesy of the Family
The tumultuous times in Pakistan following the 1977 declaration of martial law by General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq made Mr. Akhlaq restless. He received a Fulbright scholarship in 1987 to study at Yale University, and the family lived for two years in New Haven, Conn. They returned to Pakistan for two years before moving to Turkey in 1992. They had been teaching at Ankara’s Bilkent University for about a year when their Canadian immigration came through, Nurjahan said.
Within months of moving to Toronto in the fall of 1992, the family started living at the Arcadia Housing Co-operative. Ms. Alam used the co-operative’s studio, taught classes and organized solo shows at the Arcadia Art Gallery. While the move to Canada was difficult for Mr. Akhlaq, who was well-established in Pakistan, Ms. Alam lost no time finding fellow potters and artists no matter where she went.
Then tragedy struck in 1999. Mr. Akhlaq and Jahanara, the elder daughter, were murdered by a gunman while visiting Lahore to celebrate Eid.
“It’s a huge trauma for anyone to lose half their family, and I think particularly for her, she lost a child,” Nurjahan said.
To deal with the grief, Ms. Alam set up the Zahoor Project in 2000 to archive and research the influence of her husband’s work, an endeavour that Nurjahan has now taken on. She also showcased several art exhibits inspired by her deceased daughter Jahanara’s emerging work as a dancer of Kathak, a classical Indian form, and founded the Jahan e Jahanara Centre for Traditional Arts for Children in 2010.
For all her delightful quirks and charms, Ms. Alam could also be an exacting parent, Nurjahan said. As a teenager who preferred to remain in her room reading books when visitors descended on their home, she didn’t appreciate her mother’s demand for tameez, an Urdu word that loosely translates to polite or socially correct manners, at the time.
“Before you know it, you find yourself frying pakoras for the guests,” Nurjahan said, with a fond laugh. “She was always very spontaneous, which is something I struggled with because I like to plan things out. I realized later that it all comes from the same place, where she took things to excessive levels. She was just being herself.”
Ms. Alam leaves her daughter Nurjahan Akhlaq.