intimacy
Curator: Maha Malik Layout Design: Sara Suleman Photography: Courtesy of the Artists Cover Credit: Ayessha Quraishi, Journal Detail, 1999. Printed at Topical, Lahore. (info@topicalprinters.com) Published: 2013 copyright Š 2013 All rights reserved under international copyright convention. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
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intimacy curated by maha malik
ayessha quraishi. lala rukh. meher afroz. mussarat mirza. naiza h. khan
anthology for a quiet mind
I At first, let me suggest a rhetorical question. How may a work, in which figurative form is excised, be at once deeply sensual? Conversely, one may ask, where then lies the realm of the sensual? Let us begin with a not uncommon contemporary condition – the erosion of communicable experience. In extreme, testimonials of depersonalized states often describe the world as a blank slate. During such episodes, discursive meaning is lost, an inner referential language and logic, at the same times as the world loses distinction – resemblance, contour, weight. And yet within this condition of figural loss, a great and frightening exertion, there sometimes emerges another plane of consciousness, an uncanny fluency, an inner sense of address. It were as though intimate speech lay at the limits of received, representational language, or in its very rupture. Critic Geeta Kapur provides an unusual corollary perspective in her discussion of the Indian artist, Nasreen Mohamedi. She speaks of abstract art in terms of ‘the absent body’. This is not the literal absence of body, but something at once obscured and inviolably present, a constitutional force in the work. And she writes: ‘…as if to say, the absent body creates its own phenomenology of space.’ 1 The current exhibition is a manner of improvisation on this phrase, including all that it theoretically underscores. Titled Intimacy, in that first sense of self-address, the show draws upon the practice of five artists who either work directly with abstraction, or who have turned away from the centrality of figural form in recent years. The 5
show spans three generations of women. And it highlights a range of work – distinctly different in oeuvre as it is in intent. Gathered in one place though, these differences grow porous, complementary, conversational. A constellation of meanings emerge around the artists’ spatial gesture. II From a curatorial perspective, two poles of spatial rendering structure the exhibition. At one end, we radically revisit the genre of landscape. And at the other end, within formal abstraction, we return to the power of a contemplative art aesthetic. Lines of affiliation blur on canvas. Regions of thought begin to surface, affective, metaphysical, social. One may speak of a kind of building up, an intimate terrain in the work. It were as though the absent body allows for amplified subjectivity. Not bound by the confines of visible, mimetic form, something more subtle, ephemeral, and poignant, is raised here as discourse. For in the gesture of opening up space, articulating it thus, the mysterious nature of ‘inhabitance’ is made critical. By this I suggest a dialectical concern: that of dwelling intimately in our times, and in privation, on this land, in solitude, in relation. Binary oppositions are excised. Inside and out grow fluid. For our selected artists, the category of sensual perception itself becomes a conceptual tool. III Naiza Khan. During the last five years, Naiza Khan has produced a sustained body of work which both documents and responds to the changing topography of Manora Island. Her engagement with 6
urban space and modernity manifests most strikingly, for this viewer, in a series of large-format landscape paintings. Eschewing conventional protocols of the genre, including verisimilitude and nostalgia, these works appear instead as studies of rent space. They are marked by open brushwork, as well as by the loss of a single, cohering perspective (as around a figure). Terrestrial form is built up, layer by layer, and simultaneously rendered solvent, disaggregate, in the same visual frame. One is reminded here of critic Meena Alexander’s observation: ‘One cannot conceive of landscape in the structure of which the perceiving subject is not implicit.’2 In view of this insight, one may see how the genre serves Khan as a site for spatialization of the self. Categories of public/ private narrative grow redundant. We find in these paintings, in their structural encourse, the fabrication of a more visceral historic consciousness. The artist employs a cosmopolitan range of reference towards this end. It includes medieval European landscape painting, studies of Japanese woodcuts, local folk narrative, as well as urban-historic research. Khan appears to have transformed her earlier, directive propositions about the body into at once wider and more circumspect realms of thought. Mussarat Mirza is renowned for her site-specific work. In the first instance, she draws inspiration from the city of Sukkur, where she is based. A palette for light colors, a palette for dark colors, and a third, where something new emerges – the spirit of an arid, ancient, spiritually dense land. I speak of the innate quietness in her work, as we cross the Indus full of autumn shine. The city is a maze, a skyline of fragile brick towers, at a distance. But everywhere, in a 7
side lane, through a sudden doorway, emerging from the river, there are dargahs, mandirs, the hazris of local buzurgs, Khwaja Khizr’s astana. Amidst such density and such ruin, I see a vision of worn, almost sheer sails, and the steadiness of water beneath. We begin to speak about a manner of witness. It were as though this is what her oil paintings acknowledged – the feeling of receiving great distances. Mirza works within the monastic discipline of limitation. She works from memory, while her canvases are structured by the framing principles of landscape. In seeking the essence of things, abstraction serves her as a tool, both conceptually and visually. One is reminded here that Sukkur is suffused with burial sites. It is marked by that which renders the other side. But this as well: in a city of continual urban walling in, view is everything. The word ‘manzir’ takes on implications of spiritual guidance, discernment. Color, she occasions, is in the eyes of the artist. ‘We live in a world of dust, not concrete flesh and bone, but dust.’ Interiors and arable views of the city, all are emptied out in panels of light and dark, densely applied color, but for the implicit breath-presence of the viewing subject. ‘Figure and environment… the two elements in her paintings fuse together…until they may be indistinguishable from one another.’3 The paradox is striking. Such alive figural imagination (on the literal as well as esoteric plane), and yet the outlook on canvas is a manner of departure, a dissolution of form. We view a practice in which the very notion of depth is altered. It is as though the world of appearances were revealed, surpassed – to gesture at the breadth of some other great 8
emergence. In this rich, textural body of work Mirza uses landscape personally. She draws on the intellectual context of aniconic Islam, a particular history of abstraction, in order to suggest her subject. Lala Rukh is acknowledged for her pioneering work in the field of minimal art in the region. Her ocean-based series may be sourced in the early 9os. Some two decades of sustained attendance, upon a single terrestrial frame, have helped facilitate her signature style: a spare, emotionally resonant visual language. Lala Rukh uses a fragile and venerable format as the basis for her seascape imagery. This intensity of black, its sensual force, is expressive in the artist’s hands. Over the years Lala Rukh has shifted media, from photographic to carbon paper, and her mark-making has grown increasingly reductive. We are privy to an exceptional kind of confidence – a processual subjective erasure in the work. The artist’s most recent works are rendered in graphite, black on embracing black. Her reference to eastern classical music here is critical. ‘We have been discussing drawing as thought process, or thinking in the language of drawing. This language is abstract, like music, and it has its own logic.’4 Continuing the analogy, one may perceive the state of drawing, of art itself, as consonant with music in the artist’s oeuvre. In its inner disciplines, as well as in its refusal of delineated form, the work does not occlude narrative. On the contrary, a welling power of personal narrative may be received in Lala Rukh’s most visually obscure works. Abstraction sustains the very possibility of expression, of vocality.
9
Turning to its art historic context, one of the main features that distinguishes abstraction in the subcontinent from its Euro-American antecedent is that the phenomenon did not replace representation here in any pure, exclusivist sense. On the contrary, from the 50s onwards artists in both Pakistan and India drew on and reinterpreted the discourse for their own particular relevance. We return to the plural nature of regional aesthetics, and Lala Rukh’s work may be considered in this median trajectory. In particular, narrative and abstraction are not mutually opposed categories for her. In those light, barely visible markings on carbon, we receive entire tableaux of feeling as well as reference. And we are barely able to explain this phenomenon, on the surface of reason. The subtlety of Lala Rukh’s gesture speaks to a kind of spatial freedom, a motional grace manifest across her work, including the ‘nightscape’ series. Meher Afroz is known both as pioneering printmaker and as painter par excellence. Her work is often considered within the parameters of subcontinental visual reference and incisive social critique. In terms of method, her canvases are defined by a dedicated exploration of texture-building techniques. Her imperative, ‘to layer, scratch, emboss acrylic pigment, until the surface coalesces with detail, to form [an independent] pictorial language.’5 This layered effect suggests an aesthetic and temporally resonant environment, upon which the artist builds her critical commentaries. Figures enter the picture plane, specifically as a means of narrative conveyance. In recent years however, the artist has begun to explore that ‘independent pictorial language’ as subject in and of itself. Afroz 10
describes this shift within the conceptual terms of a palimpsest, or a visual manuscript in which contemporary marks give way to expose earlier, erased images in the same space. Her concerns with continuum and a historically conscious register remain constant. But in her most recent works, she further plumbs the potential of non-figural spatiality. Afroz uses the word ‘sada’ to describe this new orientation. Past the purely visual picture plane, her textural practice alludes to sonic force, to a calling and reception, as it were. Geometric harmony, an aspect of her earlier works, is all but effaced here. In its place we find a great gestural fluidity. The artist repeatedly renders the Quranic syllable ‘hu’, till its graphic form is no longer apparent. The two-dimensional surface transforms into rhythmic affect. In her turn away from the primacy of representational logic, Afroz seems to query conventional categories of perception. The acoustic and tensile fabric of her works compel viewers to receive ‘art’ with a reciprocal attendance. Bereft of figural form, one begins to receive meaning in terms of proximities, and subtle thresholds, the eloquence of states of flow. Ayessha Quraishi has used abstract method across the body of her work. The youngest artist in this constellation, her practice may be understood in terms of a formal, contemplative art aesthetic. Her works on paper are non-discursive in the first instance, and they suggest the meditative, as subject matter. The artist mediates with her hands directly. Moving oils on paper, she seems to render the very experience of objectless states. ‘You create an armature for 11
silence, a holding place for emptiness to be.’ Quraishi seems to instill in her works a rich sense of stillness, a way of being in the depths where there appears no thing, and not void, but a place of living and expressive matter, light. Her compositions use the formal apparatus of color, line, and texture, rhythmically finessed to the point paint yields its own luster. It illuminates the environment at hand. The power of such privation may be sourced in a series of small diaries, art journals covered in dull gold. The artist has maintained these journals as reference for over two decades. They carry the same gestural activity as her larger works on paper and on timber, except for their slight format. Each book opens to jeweled color and to graphite markings in the manner of a naïve art. For her current works, the artist has photographed selected pages from her diaries, digitally reworking them for print. These are then scaled and manually addressed with oils, as per her practice. The contemporary distinction between digital image and painting, with all its biases in tow, becomes radically blurred in the work. In how many ways may one source yield itself? The question is raised here as both creative challenge and as ethical value. Quraishi explores the relationship between singular utterance and a proliferation of meaning in this particular suit of images. And, as per her prior thematics, the exhaustive technique suggests a particular kind of personal aesthetics. Emptying out, as the work of praise in art. IV Let me return to the show’s original refrain. How may a work, in 12
which figurative form is excised, be at once deeply sensual? Conversely, one may ask, where then lies the realm of the sensual? Without conclusion, here is a way of speaking about the body: in the language of lyrical absence. From the charge of landscape in their work to strictures of formal abstraction, the selected artists return us to critical spatial and subjective concerns within contemporary art in Pakistan. We find at stake the imperative of communicable experience. As digression, we once again begin to prize open a ‘sense’ of the feminine, or what it may mean to bear one’s own intimacy. Maha Malik . December 2012
End notes: 1. Geeta Kapur. With Frugal Means: Nasreen Mohamedi. Asia Archive, 2009. 2. Meena Alexander. The Poetic Self, Towards a Phenomenology of Romanticism. Humanities Press Inc., New Jersey: 1980. 3. Salima Hashmi. Unveiling the Visible: Lives and Works of Women Artists of Pakistan. Lahore, 2002. 4. Lala Rukh in conversation with Mariah Lookman, guest curator at Green Cardamom Gallery, London, 2011. 5. Niilofer Farrukh. Pioneering Perspectives. Ferozsons, Lahore: 1998.
13
ayessha quraishi
I work in a way that has been natural to me since I was a child. Visually, the process is similar to that of braille. Physically, I maintain contact at all times with two materials; one is the surface and the other is paint. My hands perform two roles simultaneously; the right applies paint on the surface while the left removes the applied paint. Often a rag is used for the excess. A set of hand gestures and motions, repeated in different sequences during a period of 4-12 hours at a stretch, produce markings for a visual language. From this surface of fact, between paint applied to suggest form, and then removed to hint at the formless, the aesthetic pulse of the work is detected. Through the repetitive, the meditative may be reached. This gestural motion works through vocabularies of form and the formless, till harmony is recorded in the residue of process. In a fine-tuned silence between the performer and the observer this conversation continues. An intelligence that is aware of its own nature thus comes to realize its limitations. It delivers into a space where knowledge is non-linear, and it bears no opposites. This is a place of intimacy, of alchemy, of transformation. Underneath the skin of languages opens a book, with unbound pages of light, with vocabularies in transparent ink. This cannot be translated in form or formlessness, but as its residue.
journal image oil on paper 10.6 x 16.5 in . 2012
light pg. 2 oil on paper 30 x 39.3 in . 2012
light pg. 1 oil on paper 38.9 x 39.4 in . 2012
lala rukh
I came to the ocean series in the early 90’s. I would spend a lot of time by the ocean at night during this period. I was also working with photography in the darkroom. So the impact on my art was natural. The ocean series are done on photographic paper, preexposed and darkened in the photo process. It is then worked on with different drawing media and paint. In the hieroglyphic series I and II, I employed calligraphic forms for a different rendition of the ocean. As the marks morphed, they became like coded language. This harks back to the lines of my early life drawings – the almost gestural marks which had developed in rendering the human figure. It seemed as if all the thousands of drawings I had done came together in the ocean series. I had in the meantime discovered carbon paper – which was the blackest and most beautiful surface I had worked on yet. Because it is so pristine, so perfectly black, it demands respect. In these current drawings I have allowed the paper to dictate to me. That is, the images are embedded in the paper (and in the shadows). In a sense the whole work is about seeing. Lala Rukh in conversation with Mariah Lookman, guest curator at Green Cardamom, London, 2011.
line drawing 10 conte crayon on rag paper
river in ocean, IV mixed media on photopaper 10 x 12 in . 1992
nightscape II graphite on carbon paper 8 x 10 in . 2011
meher afroz
supportive drawing graphite on somerset paper 10 x 11 in . 2012
baaz gasht acrylic on canvas 30 x 60 in . 2012
sada I acrylic on canvas 24 x 24 in . 2012
mussarat mirza
under-painting oil on canvas 40 x 40 in . 2012
II oil on canvas 40 x 40 in . 2012
III oil on canvas 40 x 40 in . 2012
naiza h. khan
My practice over the last 25 years has been centered in the self, in subjective experience. I have worked with the body for many years, and my aesthetic is grounded in an intensive drawing practice. Both concerns have been instrumental in my approach to Manora Island. That is, work based on the island is also rooted in subjective experience. This is so even as it engages with collective memory, and with mapping terrain through specific points in the landscape or events in history. The evidence of a rooted space, or site, has always been the impetus and in/visible in the conception of my works. Over a period of time, and through a deeper engagement, I feel my relationship with Manora’s landscape has become itself an internal, bodybased concept. It has shed its literal association to the site and has become something more emotive and conceptual. I think this deeper engagement began with a sense of wandering, of walking freely in a larger geographical space, beyond my own ghettoized residential enclave. I realized what I was trying to access was a wider experiential contact and imprint in my work. I was drawn to the possibility of anchoring myself in a more detailed temporality.
journal image three snowglobes watercolor and graphite on paper 5.2 x 8.2 . 2012
snowglobe under construction oil on canvas 40 x 28 in . 2012
kurrachee past, present, future (work in progress) oil on canvas. 78 x 106 in . 2013
ayessha quraishi Ayessha is a self-taught artist. She currently resides in Karachi.
Solo Exhibitions
Residencies
2012
Letters From an Underground Vein
2011
Winter Academy, Fayoum, Egypt.
Read, Koel Gallery, Karachi.
2010
International Painting Symposium,
1998
Indus Gallery, Karachi.
Luxor, Egypt.
1997
The Art Gallery, Islamabad.
1996
Association Saint-Henri, France.
1995 NCA Gallery, Lahore. 1995
Gallery Ardeco Avignon, France.
Group Exhibitions 2012
Abstract Art in Contemporary
Russia, Moscow.
2012
Universal Sapience, Freiburg,
Germany. 2011
Galleria Pall Mall, London,
2011
Biennial Izmir, Turkey.
2002
Takhti Project, Toronto.
2001
Takhti Project, Sadequain Gallery,
Karachi. 2000
Alliance Françoise, Karachi.
lala rukh Lala Rukh has taught at the Department of Fine Arts, Punjab University, from 1978 – 1982. She has been part of the Fine Art Faculty at National College of Arts, Lahore, from 1982 – 2008. She currently resides in Lahore.
Education
Group Exhibitions (contd.)
1976. University of Chicago (MFA),
2008
GREYNOISE Launch show, Alhamra
Chicago.
Arts Council, Lahore.
1970. Punjab University (MFA),
2006
Artists’ Voices. Body. Amin Gulgee
Lahore.
Gallery, Karachi.
2006
Artists’ Voices. Calligraphy. Amin
Solo Exhibitions
Gulgee Gallery, Karachi.
2010
Drawings 2010, Koel Gallery,
2004
Art from Pakistan, House of
Karachi. In collaboration
Commons, London.
with GREY NOISE.
2002
Let Peace Prevail: Exhibition of
2004
Exhibitions of Works: 1989 – 2004,
Women Artists, V M Gallery,
Zahoor-al-Akhlaq Gallery, National
Karachi.
College of Art, Lahore.
2001
Vasl International Artists’ Workshop
2004
Exhibitions of Works: 1989 – 2004, V
Exhibition, Gulgee Museum,
M Art Gallery, ZVMG Rangoonwala
Karachi.
Center, Karachi.
2000
PAKISTAN: Another Vision, Brunei
Gallery, SOAS, London.
2000
Scope VII, Gallery NCA, Lahore.
Group Exhibitions 2011
Scripted Across the Indian Ocean.
Green Cardamom, London.
2011
Artissima 18. Grey Noise Gallery.
Italy 2011
Non- Aligned, Barefoot Gallery,
Colombo. 2011
Imag(in)ing Cities, Amin Gulgee
Gallery, Karachi.
2011
India Art Summit, New Delhi.
2010
New Art from Pakistan, Thomas
Erben Gallery, New York.
2008
Let’s Talk, GREYNOISE in
collaboration with The JamJar,
Dubai.
meher afroz Meher teaches at Indus Valley School of Art and Design, Karachi, 1990 to date. She currently resides in Karachi.
Education
Group Exhibitions (contd.)
1971
Honors in Fine Arts, Government
2007
Multiple Edition - One,
College of Arts and Crafts,
printmaking show by
contemporary printmakers,
Lucknow.
Chawkandi Gallery, Karachi.
Solo Exhibitions
2007
Confluence: a show of six women
2012
Naqsh bar aab(image on water),
painters from India and Pakistan,
Chawkandi Art Gallery, Karachi.
Kalakriti Art Gallery, Hyderabad,
2006
Message Informal, Nomad
India.
Gallery, Islamabad.
2007
Group exhibition, Renaissance
2005
Pindaar, Chawkandi Gallery,
Gallery, Bangalore.
Karachi.
2006
Artist Voices - Body, Amin Guljee
2004
Replacing Realities Series,
Gallery, Karachi.
Nomad Gallery, Islamabad.
2006
Artist Voices - Calligraphy, Amin
2001
Zindan Series, Chawkandi
Guljee Gallery, Karachi.
Gallery, Karachi.
2006
12th Asian Art Biennale, Dhaka.
2000
Fragile Series, Bretton Hall
2006
Footprints: Women in Printmaking
Gallery, University of Leeds, UK.
at Gallery Chemould, Mumbai.
2006
Colors of Life, Cymroza Gallery,
Group Exhibitions
Mumbai.
2012
Mein, Koel Art Gallery, Karachi.
2003
Inspiration from the Indus,
2010
Who’s Afraid of Theory? A critics-
Hong Kong.
artists’ collaborative, Poppyseed
2003
Laal Exhibition, Art Gallery,
Gallery, Karachi.
Toronto.
2010
Framing the Local Context,
2002
Baghdad Third International
Poppyseed Art Gallery, Karachi.
Festival of Plastic Arts, Iraq.
2008
Unseen Visions: Contemporary
2000
Pakistan - Another Vision, Brunei
Painting in Pakistan at East-West
Gallery, London.
Center Gallery, Honolulu, Hawaii.
2007
Winds of Change:
A Retrospective of Contemporary
Pakistani Art, Gallery Pratidev,
London.
mussarat mirza Mussarat has taught at the Fine Arts Department, Sindh University, at Jamshoro, 1972 – 1992. She is currently based in Sukkur.
Education
Group Exhibitions (Pakistan 1967-2011)
Honors in Fine Arts, Punjab University.
Mussarat Mirza has held more than two dozen shows across Karachi, Lahore, and
Selected International Exhibitions
Islamabad. She has also participated in
2004
many group shows within Pakistan.
Muslim Fest: Living Arts Center,
Toronto. 2002
International Islamic Biennial,
Her last solo exhibition, Hain Muntazir, was
Museum of Contemporary
held at Chawkandi Art Gallery, Karachi, in
Art, Tehran.
2011.
2001
Sharjah International Arts Bienniel,
UAE. 2000
Asian Invitation, Seol.
naiza h. khan Naiza has been part of the Fine Art Faculty at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi, from 1991 - 2008. Based in Karachi, she currently lectures at the Visual Studies Department at Karachi University.
Education
Group Exhibitions (contd.)
1990
BFA Somerville College, University
2010
Cairo Biennale, Cairo.
of Oxford, Ruskin School of
2010
Between Kismet and Karma Leeds
Drawing and Fine Art.
Art Gallery, Leeds.
1987
Foundation Course, Wimbledon
2009
Hanging Fire, Asia Society Gallery
School of Art, UK.
and Museum, New York.
2009
Contemporary Art from Pakistan,
Solo Exhibitions
Thomas Erben Gallery, New York.
2013
Forthcoming: Karachi Elegies,
2009
Moving On, inaugural show,
Broad Museum, Michigan.
National Art Gallery, Islamabad.
2010
Restore the Boundaries - The
2008
Arte Fiera di Bologna, Bologna.
Manora Project, Rossi & Rossi,
2008
ShContemporary, Shanghai.
ARTDubai, Dubai.
2008
Desperately Seeking Paradise, Art
2008
The Skin She Wears, Rossi & Rossi,
Dubai, Dubai.
London.
2007 Figurative Pakistan, Aicon Gallery,
2008
Iron Clouds I, Rohtas II, Lahore.
London
2007
Heavenly Ornaments, Canvas
2005
Layers of Time and Space, Ifa
Gallery, Karachi.
Gallery, Berlin/Stuttgart.
2006
bare the fact, bear the fact,
2005
Beyond Borders – Art of Pakistan,
Chemould Gallery, Mumbai.
National Gallery of Modern Art,
2004
Exhale, Canvas Gallery, Karachi.
Bombay.
2000
Voices Merge, Chawkandi Art,
2004
Living Masters - Young Voices,
Alhamra Gallery, Lahore.
2002
Threads, Dreams and Desires:
Group Exhibitions
ArtSouthAsia, Harris Museum,
2012
9th Shanghai Biennale:
Preston UK.
Reactivation, Shanghai.
2001
The Eye Still Seeks, Ivan Doughty
2012
XV Donna Biennial: Art Decoding
Gallery, UNSW, Sydney.
Violence, PAC Museum, Ferrara,
2000
Another Vision: Fifty years of
Italy.
painting and sculpture in Pakistan,
2011
Amelia Johnson Gallery,
Brunei Gallery, London.
Hong Kong.
2010
Manifesta 8, Chamber of Public
Secrets, Murcia, Spain.
Karachi.
In gratitude Ayessha Quraishi, Lala Rukh, Meher Afroz, Mussarat Mirza, Naiza H. Khan Noorjehan Bilgrami Layout Design: Sara Suleman Photography: Courtesy of the Artists Printing: Topical, Lahore Capri Foundation
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