Skin of the City: Poetics of Architecture in Srinagar

Skin of the City dwells on the quiet poetics of architecture—where windows, doors and thresholds hold memory as much as they frame space. It is a photographic excavation of Srinagar’s tactile memory—its surfaces worn by time, faith and survival. This series peels back the city's outer layers to reveal the deep entanglement between its architecture—its windows and doors—and its people, between urban form and emotional terrain.

Windows and doors in Kashmir are more than apertures in walls—they are quiet sentinels of time, keepers of stories whispered through latticework and fractured reflections of a past that lingers like dust on forgotten panes. But these doors and windows are not just passive observers.

In Kashmiri folklore, portals to other realms exist within ordinary spaces—hidden in the shimmering threshold of a house, the reflection of a river, or the silent gaze from behind a half-drawn curtain. And in the fabric of urban memory of Kashmir’s lived history, each window and door becomes a liminal space—opening into forgotten homes, vanished communities and legends that still echo through the valley.

The city’s architecture is its epidermis, holding centuries of longing. Skin of the City is not a spectacle of ruin but a sensitive negotiation with the lived city—how people mark it, touch it and care for it. It asks: What do we choose to reveal? What remains obscured? And what stories do these windows and doors still hold? It invites viewers to see the built environment not just as structure, but as skin: permeable, storied, vulnerable.

To learn more artists exploring representations of Kashmir, read Mehran Qureshi’s two-part essay on Kashmir as Poem and (Impossible) Picture, Jigisha Bhattacharya’s reflections on Sohrab Hura’s Snow (2015–ongoing), Sukanya Deb’s observations on Desire Machine Collective’s Nishan I (2007–12) and Nishan II (2019) and Najrin Islam’s curated album from Moonis Ahmad Shah’s Telegrams to Bollywood from a Mad Landscape Scout (2017–18).

All images are from Skin of the City (2024–25) by Zoya Khan. Images courtesy of the artist.

Click on the image to view the album