Risham Syed – interview: ‘It’s an inward-looking invitation to contemplation’

Syed talks about Each Tiny Drop, her intervention in a city park, as part of Manchester International Festival 2023, that she hopes will help to build communities around a body of water

For this year’s Manchester International Festival, the Lahore-based artist Risham Syed has programmed a new public park, Mayfield Park, with songs and kinetic sculptures in a work entitled Each Tiny Drop, referencing the River Medlock that still flows along its edge, and honouring the community-building connections between vital water sources in Manchester and her home country of Pakistan.

Risham Syed, Each Tiny Drop, Mayfield Park, Manchester International Festival 2023. Photo: Martin Kennedy.

Part of a new development close to Piccadilly station, Mayfield Park is the first public park to be created in Manchester for 100 years. With a landscape reminiscent of the semi-wild rolling contours of the 2012 Olympic Park, or New York’s High Line, the intervention, directed by Angie Bual, includes kinetic sculptures and soundscapes.

Risham Syed, Each Tiny Drop, Mayfield Park, Manchester International Festival 2023. Unfired terracotta pots. Photo: Martin Kennedy.

On the warm summer’s evening of the press run-through, the sculptures tinkle in the background. We are invited to pick up a small, unfired terracotta pot, then fill it with the water that drips from the sculpture’s assorted spouts (some of which has been taken from the Soan River in Pakistan), and then move around the park slowly, to the haunting strains of a sound work by Dan Jones embedded in planting.

Risham Syed, Each Tiny Drop, Mayfield Park, Manchester International Festival 2023. Photo: Martin Kennedy.

We finish our ritual by disposing of the water in the River Medlock. The experience, on an unusually sunny Manchester afternoon, is delightful, eliciting a quiet appreciation of the new, flourishing plants and grasses that fill this restorative new space. During the evening’s ceremony, the procession was to be accompanied by a singing from a local choir, and by Syed herself.

Risham Syed, Each Tiny Drop, Mayfield Park, Manchester International Festival 2023. Photo: Martin Kennedy.

Syed talks to Studio International about the age-old tradition of gathering, building communities around a body of water, and of the rituals that become embedded in that community through repetition. She hopes that this work, in a new park, in a newly regenerating part of Manchester, will help to draw a community around this precious green space and its watery assets. As to the rituals, she hopes new rituals will be sparked: “Such as … being mindful, being thoughtful of our daily actions. Those are the kind of rituals we should think about now. Things that you do every day, but being mindful of our connection with water and going back to where it all started from, and not taking it for granted.

Syed completed her BA at National College of Arts in Lahore, and received her MA from the Royal College of Art, London, where she focused on painting, including traditional miniatures. For her installations, she also uses drawing, embroidery, weaving and quilting.

Various venues, Manchester
29 June – 16 July 2023

Interviewed by VERONICA SIMPSON
Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY