سفر نصیب / Safar Naseeb / Fated to journey

Elyas Alavi in collaboration with Fazil Mousavi Curated by Jacqui Shelton

La Trobe Art Institute biannual facade commission, Bendigo, Victoria, Australia

24 July 2025 to 25 Jan 2026

Artist and poet Elyas Alavi, based in Naarm/Melbourne, has collaborated with Quetta-based senior artist Fazil Mousavi, bringing their explorations of the Hazara migratory experience into dialogue across oceans. Alavi met fellow artist Mousavi when he visited Quetta to connect with relatives and the broader Hazara diaspora that has made a home there. Mousavi is a key figure of the Pakistani art scene, having taught many local artists who continue to work as professionals across Pakistan. This, their first collaboration, takes its title from a poem by South Asian poet and philosopher Allama Iqbal, Tanhai (Loneliness):

سفر نصیب! نصیبِ تو منزلے است کہ نیست؟
"Safar naseeb, naseeb-e-to manzilist keh neest"

("O traveller of fate, is there even a destination in your destiny?")

On the La Trobe Art Institute façade are presented two scroll-like paintings by Mousavi that depict layered histories and experiences. Prominent in the work are the outlines of boot prints, referencing the intrusion of a nameless aggressor, and the humiliation of a people. Also included is calligraphy that reproduces Mousavi’s late-uncle’s letters, written to his family after he travelled from Pakistan to Afghanistan, which contain veiled references to shared family knowledge. Coded to evade Taliban interception,  this correspondence communicated proof of life. The large figure rendered in burnt sienna references a prior drawing by Mousavi, capturing the inhumanity and cruelty of the early Taliban regime through the ambiguity of the medium’s material application and linework. Additionally, Mousavi has included elaborate Arabic calligraphy in a nod to the conservative interpretation of religious texts seen across all faiths, as well as snippets of Pakistani mainstream media scattered throughout the paintings. These two citations together speak to the practice of wilful misrepresentation in both religious and secular contexts.

These paintings are seemingly suspended within the outline of a simple boat shape, represented by a blue neon light. A reoccurring motif in Alavi’s practice, this neon line references the experience of migration via boat familiar to many members of the Hazara community around the world. In this commission, the boat becomes a site of possibility, containing and carrying the language, symbolism and layered experience that comes from a contested homeland and the fated journey of the global Hazara community.

Read a newly commissioned essay by Aziz Sohail in response to Fazil and Elyas' work.

Image: Elyas Alavi and Fazil Mousavi, سفر نصیب / Safar Naseeb / Fated to journey, 2025. La Trobe Art Institute biannual facade commission. Courtesy of the artists. Photo: Leon  Schoots.