PAINTING WITH WORDS

“Once upon a time… in a land not so far, far away.. there lived a girl called miniature painting… She was a delicate yet seductive girl… not just beautiful but an accomplished story teller (a magic realist).. But one day her father, fearing her charms, locked her up in the basement of their home with the only facility of cable TV. At first she wept and wept … then she danced to the tunes of mtv and bollypop … and read the book. She debated it endlessly with the mirror till she felt faint, the frail thing that she was … But, alas, now there was no one around to even find this endearing … She missed being loved and sought after … once lively, and vibrant, her colour faded and as the year passed, the lustre left her. She was sad and lonely and her imagination was failing her… And finally she began to think about beauty and intellect … which did she love more?"

view of the gallery walls.

The vinyl lettering pasted on the walls of the gallery, tells this story of loss of innocence or rather loss of ignorance in Ayesha Jatoi’s new work titled ‘Mirror Mirror’. “Where ignorance is a bliss, tis folly to be wise”, perhaps ignorance IS a bliss, perhaps in lack of knowledge lies happiness, but this corruption of a sheltered mind is merely a fact of circumstances and not a choice made by the protagonist of Jatoi’s story. The work has a twofold (or perhaps three or fourfold) thematic value; to understand the development of history painting into a contemporary form that has spurred vigorous debate, as well as a critique of the gendered definitions of womanhood and gendered differences in fairytales, where women find themselves entrapped in ‘chambers’ of actual or perceived perimeters and the ‘mirror’ (as the title suggests) is the controlling metaphor that represents the mediated reflections, almost impossible to shatter to be replaced by a truer mirror in order to reveal a real or natural self. ‘She’ is perhaps an inventive alter ego for Jatoi’s identity as a miniature artist who at the same time is not medium specific but her work nevertheless is in dialogue with this very art form, hence working/living in-between mediums/selves, marking differences while the boundaries are under continuous negotiations. What sort of a new identity comes out of this union of the inherent and the acquired? (for both Jatoi and Miniature painting) I was quite curious about the nature of the book that ‘She’ read after she wept and wept, but ‘reading’ I guess is synonymous to possessing a deeper awareness here.

This show of miniature painting, without a display of pretty paintings of exquisite beauty and color encased in ornate frames, questions/critiques/defines/redefines what miniature is, a question worth asking. Is it an art of the book associated with its long standing history, hence defining the scale? Is it the laborious practice of pardakh? Is it only done on a wasli with a brush made of fine squirrel hair? Is it a certain kind of imagery or subject matter? Is it only about clinging to an exotic otherness to be accepted and viewed internationally? Etcetra, etcetra. In answer to that, right outside the entrance to the gallery, on a white pedestal, is placed a book enclosed in an acrylic box, opened to the page that explains the origins of the word ‘miniature’; which is derived from the Latin word ‘minium’, meaning red lead, along with its historical background. This information in the book is painstakingly crafted in very very small handwriting done with a lead pencil (or perhaps a siah kalam) by Jatoi. Concerning the politics of representation of Pakistani art, the neo-miniature, that has unleashed an interest unwitnessed in the past in this art form, “has deeply altered the practices of many Pakistani artists and altered the reading/viewing of public’s general views about art to a great extent” (Mirza, 2008, pg 58), about which there has been an inconclusive debate about its supplementary role in reinforcing cliché’s about Pakistan or Islam. If ‘Contemporary Art’ (as defined by Danto, Belting, Navarra and many others) is an end of reliance on a cohesive set of aesthetic problems for ‘a’ period in art history and is believed to be more of a social phenomenon or a tool for communication, depending on the effects of globalization, altering the maps of cultural geographies, then do we really need to invest in rooting artistic mediums in local cultures, histories and geographies?

This use of language evokes the experience of viewing and understanding of the subject for the reader/viewer, developing a visual investigation with written language, whose history can be traced back to the Conceptualists’ extensive inclusion of long/detailed titles concluding into the title itself being the work. It is hard to discuss the legitimacy of an art object when we are 40 years ahead of the times in which all hierarchies of an Art object have been rejected, transcending the traditional categories of painting, sculpture, photography, film e.t.c, rejecting all notions of right and wrong, giving the artist the complete authority to employ anything that he/she decides to entitle ‘Art’.
In The End (that speaks of recovery but nor relief) she returns home wiser.

-Mirza, Quddus, Show me the Money, 2008, Art India (art news magazine of India) volume XIII/ issue I/ quarter I.

Artist As Critic; Rethinking The Purpose of Art.

As an art student at NCA and later on as well, my work has been hugely criticized for its ephemeral and non-sellable nature. I was told, if I think of Art as a profession for myself, but engage in work/jobs other than art-making to support my practice and myself, then I shall consider Art a hobby instead. I use to think, if making money was a concern, then I wouldn’t have made this choice. Also, being an old fashioned woman, the idea of the starving, struggling, unrecognized artist is so gloriously compelling to me :p and almost a prerequisite of course that I didn’t pay much attention to the business-minded and just nodded away. but Saira Ansari doesn’t!
Her recent show at Grey Noise, entitled 'the work that will probably never end', asks, tough important questions about the intricacies of making, showing, framing and selling of Art. “She feels there is a contrived idea of what art and creativity should be and many artists find themselves adhering to these commercially viable stereotypes. Ansari uses this project as a platform to question the ethics of these politics and the mercenary attitude of the galleries in Pakistan, which she believes, behave more like shops and less as promoters of art and creativity” (project description from the email invite).

Artistic activity in part is a response to the invitation to ‘produce’. Subjected to the pressures of the market, most artists tend to make compromises with the medium, form, and content of their work, producing commodities rather than art objects. Or is it a coincidence that most (read all) of the contemporary Pakistani art is in the tradition of miniature art practice with veiled female bodies in confined claustrophobic spaces, depiction of bearded men with guns and fanciful arabesque patterns? Such artists are in one way or the other conforming to the demands of the market through making works that have started looking alike with very little variations. There certainly is a need for a critical inspection of developments in the politics of representation and the role of artists, curators and galleries in this demonstration. In that context Ansari’s contribution to the activity of ‘production’ is an absence of objects. She has decided to mail empty boxes/cartons of varying sizes to almost all art galleries in Pakistan as a polite declaration of her ‘objection’. The box is only a premise for the non-existence of the work, its emptiness refers to ‘absence’ as an evidence of the inability of (her) art expression to have meaningful existence under present conditions. This recalcitrance in the face of art authorities is begging for artistic autonomy from the institutions that attempt to frame it according to their needs. “The idea is to poke them”, says Ansari (during a public talk at the opening of the exhibition).

In order of priority, Ansari’s work is concerned with the critical discourse rather than formal issues, hence I am not going to talk about the aesthetics/quality of the works exhibited, although I do feel that, in trying to fill this gap between thought and its execution, Ansari has filled the gallery with an overwhelming amount of notes, sketches, text and boxes, which certainly needs much editing.
A similar reaction to the commodification of art, was seen during the conceptual art movement in the late 60s and early 70s in the West, that critically subverted the gallery as the location, determiner, owner and distributor of art. The movement has had a tremendous influence on artists’ publications that substantially helped to facilitate this connection between authorship and authority. Ansari’s work punctuated with question marks (both literally and metaphorically) remains within the realm of criticism, which due to a lack of critical writing have remained unanswered. A turn towards theoretical issues will certainly help answer some very important questions, but what Ansari’s public talk (however brief) at the exhibition did, her work did not do, she might want to re-consider the relation between content and its execution.
It is probably too early in the life of this project to pass any judgments, as the name suggests, this project will carry on for the rest of Ansari’s life and she will continue to engage with upcoming shows by other artists at Grey Noise. It will be interesting to see the shape it takes during the course and the responses it will generate from the curators and other artists, as the nature of the project hugely relies on its reception. If lucky, what we might see after this is the beginning of the formation of friends and foes. Hopefully, people with common interests will begin to form alliances in order to examine the purpose of making art and to interrogate the nature of cultural production, starting a dialogue in the best interest of the given conditions of art, for a much needed revolution.

Ansari's will be online soon after the opening and photographs, videos, discussions and commentary can be accessed at www.thesaproject.wordpress.com.

The Common Man

I look down my office window and on the street and notice the sweat stained back of a man, bent over his cart, rearranging the fruits and fanning the flies away.

I see a fellow, naked to the waist, balancing a container of cement on the top of his head while making his way up the building that is under construction.

On my way back home, I look outside the window of my car and notice a rickshaw driver across the street smoking a cigarette while waiting for customers.

And then there is one tying the drawstring on his shalwar after peeing along the side of the main road.

Another knocks on the window of my car, insisting that I buy the rosaries that he is selling.

These men from our everyday environment that surround us all the time, are the primary source of inspiration for Basir Mahmood and the subject of his works in his debut solo exhibition, In the Time of Telling, recently shown at Grey Noise. His photographs and videos realistically depict these subjects, stressing the banality of life. Mahmood, who is a fresh graduate of BNU, emphasizes the importance of class identity as a significant social identity in people’s daily lives and its influence on the formation of our society and culture.

Mahmood, Basir, 'Untitled 5,7 &10', collage with/on archival photo paper, 12 x 16", 2010.

Mahmood, Basir, still from video Manmade, 2010.

While trying to explore the system of class divisions and the formation of social identities, Mahmood’s intentions range from emphatic documentation to specific criticism of social inequality. A series of 12 untitled photographs, sized 12” by 16”, is a type of documentary p1.hotography that voyeuristically features his subjects in candid situations within public places without their knowledge, in fact the images give an impression of being extracted from a surveillance camera installed on the street. Where as, in his video, Manmade, he assumes the role of a director. Manmade is an approximately 10 mins long silent video, for which a common worker wearing a loongi and kurta is paid to undress in front of the camera and get into a three-piece suit provided by the artist. The artist is not physically present in this work but you nevertheless feel his presence while the model is in continuous dialogue with the man behind the camera (Mahmood), seeking his approval before putting on any item of clothing. Manmade is perhaps the most poignant and devastatingly hard-hitting piece in the show, and the most confusing for me. On one hand it is clearly a critique of the experiences of the working class in urban settings, while on the other hand it victimizes the subject and replicates the very social hierarchies that it wishes to criticize, with a great potential to dissolve into mere parody. Despite the difference in his changing role when handling the camera between the various works, a compassionate observation remains constant in Mahmood’s work. Perhaps with his video Manmade, the artsist is also, sarcastically referring to the plight of the colonial subject, who has learnt the ways of a ‘civilized’ ‘democratic’ society, only by wearing a suit, tie and boots.

Art that is concerned with the life of the common man refers back to the works of artists like Courbet, Millet, Walker Evans, e.t.c and in particular to the implications of the socio-realist movement of the 19th Century which later became a very important movement in America during the ‘Great Depression’. Also, Mahmood’s focus on the realities of contemporary lives of the working class, particularly the poor is comparable to the social consciousness of the Realists in depicting the subjects as they appear in everyday life. His interest in the lives of the majority and not the elite, focuses on the representation of objective reality instead of excessive emotional jargon.

Mahmood, Basir, 'Portrait Series', 40 x 26", archival photo paper on 350 gm paper, 2010

We do not build up our impressions of one another trait by trait. Instead, we bring to the interpretation a number of pre-existing prototypes and our observations of people leads us to categorize them as being like one or another of these prototypes, existing inside or outside our own familiar world. Portraiture, for Mahmood is attuned to trace histories, memories and the layers of influences that make up a person’s identity/prototypes. His portrait series, 40” by 26” each, is a careful assimilation of various faces with socio-economic and cultural similarities, to create one portrait, critiquing the ‘construction’ of social identities and assigned social roles (prescribed by the society) versus the reality of their individual identities. “Although the lips, eyes, nostrils, and ears all belong to different men, when juxtaposed they accumulate into a generic whole, questioning the relationship between identity and social generalizations within a disintegrating society”1. Camera, being the most accessible and immediate for such explorations, adds a layer to the way real is perceived, questioning the nature of truth/reality in constructed representations while “photography guises the directorial into documentary”2.

Mahmood, Basir, ‘My Father’ (video still), 2mins 9 sec looped, shown on 3.5 inch screen, 2010.

We have learnt to look at art as the artist’s subjective experience and personal opinions translated in the form of objects/images, which calls for the knowledge of the identity of the artist, their life events and their statements (which often acquire more value than the work itself). Hence, the biographical materials available for a definitive or even a tentative interpretation of creativity grant extreme value to the artist. Unfortunately, I know nothing about Mahmood, for my validation of the content/context of these images. But, one video in the show, titled My Father (approx 2mins long), without revealing the face of the subject, shows the hands and a few gray hair of the beard of an old man (presumably the artist’s father) continuously failing at his attempts to put the end of a thread into the hole of a sewing needle. Those worker hands indeed caught my attention, which makes me wonder if Basir Mahmood is a man living amidst the world he has portrayed.

'Beneath the Surface'

An absolute definition of art is impossible to achieve but popular discussions on art almost invariably centre on its two principle tasks, self-expression and self-discovery; a process motivated by an insatiable appetite to express one’s self through imitating or re-creating the world which aims to understand and interpret subjective experience translated into objects and the means of these art objects stem solely from the subjective desire of the artist. Hence, in the most simplified sense, art activity is expressions and statements of personal opinions or feelings with the purpose of stimulating the viewer’s imagination. And it is this pleasure of reasoning provoked in the viewer that determines the merit of the work. But because of the subjective nature of taste, one cannot speak negatively of an artistic creation, only of one's inability to find artistic merit. But wouldn’t we be surrounded by mediocrity without judgments?

As I sit here, putting together my thoughts about a recent show at rohtas 2, Beneah the Surface, I try to deal with my lack of responsiveness to most of the works in the show and brood over the unsettling debates about looking and pleasure and beauty and judgements. There certainly needs to be a balance between the creative endeavour of the artist and the creative projection of emotion and feeling on the part of the viewer, which Barthe refers to as the punctum. He writes, “the punctum is what I add to the photo and which nonetheless is there already” (Heron, 1996, pg 398).

This two day preview of works by Faseeh Saleem and Mohsin Shafi, is being taken to Sweden in October, where Saleem is pursuing his MFA in textile design. He is a recent graduate of BNU, where as, Shafi did his Bachelors in graphic design from NCA and is currently enrolled in the MA visual arts, at NCA. Saleem’s content driven photography and Shafi’s photography driven content explores the issues of identity and its representation, reflecting their educational backgrounds in their treatment/relationship with their mediums. Both seek a self-defined identity while questioning incomplete or discontinuous identities within social domains. Shafi’s work, like the stamp it bears “Aalmi Rohani Tehreek-i-Anjuman-i-Sarfarooshan-i-Islam” is concerned with identity in an unspecific manner and approaches the subject of prescribed moral codes and contemporary issues like fundamentalism and extremism because of Pakistan’s primary associations with stereotypes and sensational news. This over generalized approach to ‘identity’ (spiritual, religious, gendered, national e.t.c) is further layered with highly personal/self-referential statements in the form of titles and despite being subjected to similar socio-political issues, one struggles to empathize with the subject. I also wonder about the importance of the text printed on the images, which on one hand is so small that hardly readable, becoming a textured background for the image, while on the other hand its continuous repetition highlights its significance. This text, probably xeroxed from an existing flyer/advertisement might have worked better if used in its original form, maintaining the truth of the material while questioning the role of this medium to rally conflict and explore the possibility for democratic change. Although Shafi’s work provides the right clues for an accurate interpretation of the work, but ‘to express’ and ‘to express well’ are not the same.

                                           Shafi, Mohsin, print on archival paper. 


Saleem on the other hand, is asking the viewer to consider identity particularly in relation to gender and culture. His work, “Everyone carries a shadow”, is a series of six 3.5”x5” black and white photographs printed on canvas, the size and its enclosed (box like) framing both suggest an intimacy of subject matter. In it is displayed, his hairy male belly open to spectatorial gaze. The camera focuses closely on the immediate area around his navel as his left hand carefully rests in the corner of the frame with hair embroidered onto the image to make it appear more tangible. The choice of the image, lack of color, composition and the hair sticking out of the image makes me think of Vito Acconci’s silent film, “Openings” from the 70s. Here, as the camera frames Acconci's stomach in close up, he painstakingly pulls out each hair from his belly, eventually displaying his navel to transgress his masculinity and assigning him to vulnerability that is usually aligned with feminity or to simply become gender neutral. It is interesting to note that the medium of embroidery in Saleem’s work also questions these gendered roles in a similar manner, as embroidery is a medium deemed appropriate for women.

Saleem, Faseeh, Everyone Carries a Shadow, digital print on canvas 

Both Saleem and Shafi, like Acconci are the maker, the subject and the object of their work, shifting the focus between the artist’s body as a site from that of a metaphor, in a back and forth momentum for the representation of the self. Using his body as a metaphor on which cultural and personal references are threaded, Saleem seems to be suggesting that the body communicates as much or as little as the personal and public notions on this issue. Through this work, he indulges himself in a self-scrutiny for the sake of authenticating experience and existence as a means towards self awareness in an attempt to liberate the self from traditionally bound situations. This very image is multiplied a number of times and juxtaposed on a 10”x14” canvas titled “Personality in Shadow”, which results in a simultaneous recognition and misrecognition with the image, mirroring the relationship between
identity and its representation.

Acconci, Vito. Openings, 1970, 14 min, b&w, silent, Super 8mm film on video

It is quite heart breaking when a single image has so much potential and it brings you this far only to leave you stranded on a road that leads no where. There seems to be an unsettling discrepancy between limits of the content and the medium and the work lacked a bit of a climax, “like pushing the work so you find yourself in a territory beyond the one you know” (Etchells, 1999, 52).


- Etchells, Tim. Certain Fragments, Routledge, 1999, London.
- Heron, Liz. Illuminations: women writing on photography from the 1850s to the present, Liz Heron & Val Williams, 1996, London.