Picturesque horizons appear as cut-out portals; delicate images sliced in half, or often, resisting their own framed borders. Island in the Sky, Muhanned Cader’s first solo show in Mumbai, foregrounds a lingering absence, the negative spaces across his works hold traces of what once might have been. Devoid of any human figure, perhaps these alien landscapes emerge in the aftermath of an exodus or are yet to be discovered, delineated and subsumed into the confines of nationhood. Each image is redolent of Cader’s oeuvre, rendered in immense detail, and then subtracted into an abstract vocabulary. As you look closer, a few of the artist’s abstracted fragments take a slightly different turn, acting as mirror images, or forming patterns with the (illusory) possibility of being folded together into a coherent whole. However, if you try, the pieces don’t fit and that’s the key to unravelling their hidden stories.

In 2012, Cader took the ferry to Delft Island, one of many remote islands off the coast of Sri Lanka, which have largely remained inaccessible due to war, naval control, and a tenuous political regime. Whereas an island is often seen as a silent refuge, out here, a raw wildness captures your gaze. For Cader’s painted islands are not drawn from fantasy, with serene landscapes removed from the mainland, and from the weight of the past. His terrains embody a foreboding time embedded inside their vacant forests, seascapes, and mountains. For instance, in Island in the Sky (2023), a series of 10 small oil paintings on plywood, the first image holds a deserted, beautiful coastline. But as you proceed, Cader’s colour palette infuses darker hues of red, and the landscapes slowly evoke complex emotional contours. The horizon line which appears stable at the beginning, continues to dwindle, and in the last painting, Island in the Sky #10, it disappears completely, all one can see is a simmering reflection on the ocean with no solid ground.

Cader’s landscapes are precise; each curvature of flora and granule of sand is painted with careful rigour and though one might map these references to belong to his homeland, they also hold traces of an enchanted beyond, resisting absolute signification or even geography. As Jyoti Dhar observes in her exhibition essay, “Even if you look closely for clues, you can never be sure where each of his images is from. It does not matter. This is an adventurer’s itinerary.” Moreover, these landscapes are not idyllic or nostalgic documents of the past, for the artist does not romanticise nature or history; instead, he strives to grasp its radical ambiguity, an uncertainty that lies at its core. In his charcoal drawing, Horton Plains 4 (2023), viewers see a soothing land expanse, greenery and dense foliage. Albeit, this drawing is placed next to Horton Plains 6 (2023), where a cluster of trees occupy the edge of a cliff, suspended in time, perhaps caught amid a storm, and the image slowly recedes into a fog, a shadowy expanse of space.

Cader’s visual fields hold a contradiction, appearing as both real andfictitious—composing paradoxical pathways of memory and timekeeping. For instance, his Untitled (2013) collage becomes a more literal metaphor of warped time. Presented as an accordion-like book, the work is opened out to reveal disconnected, cropped photographic images strung together, a thread as strange and unpredictable as memory itself. These zoomed-in visuals are intimate and obscure, ranging from banal household objects, magazines and floor tiles, to cut-outs of a tree, and a glimpse of the sky; there’s no linear narrative or temporality, only movement.

Ultimately, the most striking visuals are the twin Night sky #1 (2023) and Night sky #2 (2023) as the artist pans upwards into a dark sky and luminous gradients of moonlight captivates the gaze in an instant. Due to repetitive cycles of sectarian violence and conflict, curfews are often imposed in Sri Lanka, especially in the northern city of Jaffna, where Cader moved to teach at the Ramanathan Academy at the invitation of fellow artist and teacher, T. Shanaathanan. People often stayed home after dark on account of constant curfews.

Cader’s night sky accumulates their silence, their stillness, as turbulent clouds recoil and thunder set against the sublime radiance of the moon. Perhaps this sky is his momentary sanctuary, a translucent texture painted on coarse, unstretched canvas, a floating shadow with no anchor. Resisting an absolute horizon, Cader’s familiar landscapes leave you with a sense of longing and estrangement in equal measure.

Muhanned Cader's Island in the Sky will be on view at Jhaveri Contemporary from January 11 - February 24 2024.