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 The Rohtas Gallery in Lahore continues to be a promoter of young artists, especially those whose work shows an unconventional approach to image making.
Many of these young artists are now making their presence felt in the international art world; in fact, it appears that some of them are better known abroad than they are locally, where the old guard continues to reign in terms of fame and patronage.
Rohtas recently exhibited the paintings of five young Pakistani women artists — Faiza Butt, Masooma Syed , Talha Rathore, Saira Shiekh and Humaira Abid —, all of whom are graduates of the NCA, Lahore.
These artists share at least one thing in common — a predisposition towards expressing themselves through a vocabulary that is more symbolic and less literal, even though the imagery is not entirely abstract and includes forms and figures that are realistically rendered. Their discourse appears to be related to personal predicaments but which can also be interpreted in a larger context as well.
Faiza Butt’s water colour and mixed media works invoke a sense of longing for love, and perhaps lost childhood, with her cupid like figures, both singular or in an embracing posture that are seen amidst a jumble of other characters such as ‘Alice in wonderland’, or other recognisable symbols such as the moon, trees, and colourful mountains that are made in a deliberately juvenile way.
Masooma Syed’s paintings also invoke nostalgia and her imagery includes human figures that are seen in conjunction with city scapes and intense splashes of colour so that reality and subjective emotions are entwined in an enigmatic story telling stance.
The viewer is forced to decipher a connection between forms, colours and lines and interpret it in the context of the artist’s life. Family photographs, which find a place in her work, reinforce the intimate and personal flavour of the discourse.
Talha Rathore is now known for her use of actual subway maps as a backdrop for her intricate mark making on paper which is pasted on top of these maps. This New York based artist has been exhibiting in well known galleries abroad and her signature style seems to revolve around the use of maps which seem to symbolise the artist’s present life away from home and thus here too the element of past and present and the entanglements of life in the world of today with its mad rush to get somewhere, seems to be an underlying message for the viewer.
The artist overlays these maps with her sensitive miniature like patterns which appear like organic forms that have been viewed under a microscope and convey the intense and almost obsessive mood of the artist.
Saira Shiekh is another talented artist whose painterly skills and sensitive observations tend to find expression in her miniatures. Her current work is poignant and almost painful in its reference to past suffering and personal pain. The symbolism is acute and yet subtle so that the allusion to suffering is apparent but not gory, even though she even uses the colour red in a manner that it looks like blood stains. The counterfoil to her sprinkling of reds is her pristine whites and her symbols of white drapery, the red rose and the delicately drawn female form.
The fifth artist in this exhibition is Humaira Abid, who previously has been known more for her sculptures in wood. Abid is obviously very talented, for one can recall her thought provoking and brilliantly made wooden sculptures that were exhibited in the recent past. Her present miniature paintings bring forth another dimension to her work as a prolific young artist. The theme of her miniature paintings is also rather personal, but also refers to gender related predicaments, especially those that relate to a woman’s place in society. A self portrait in one of the paintings confirms the deeply personal context of the work.
Thus, the five woman show at Rohtas brings together artists from disparate and yet similar backgrounds, who are sensitive, accomplished and all set to make their mark in the contemporary art world, both at home and abroad. |
