It’s all about the gaze

Islamabad : An Exhibition of paintings by Zoya Manan curated by Zara Sajid at MyArtWorld titled, ‘It’s all about the gaze’ inaugurated on Thursday at 4.30 pm. Venue: AQS Arts and Crafts Village, Shakarparian Road.

Zoya Manan is a young, flourishing Lahore based artist. Her best weapon against herself is her art which she uses to deal with cerebral palsy and keep her sanity intact. Her recent series ‘It’s all about the gaze’ is not only a blend of bold colors and pattern which revolve around the concept of mundane acts that can be inflicted by the simple desire of looking and can either have positive or negative impact and change the situation, narrative of her paintings. She is a graduate of the National College of Arts and her work has been exhibited at several local galleries and The Brick Lane Gallery, London in 2016.

Explaining her desire to paint, she says, “I have cerebral palsy. My art allows experimenting with different medium such as charcoal, oil paints, and acrylics. Painting has allowed me to identify my enthusiasm in creating narrations on canvas through human figures. I felt I have control over my imagination and reality in my paintings, if not in real life.

My work depicts rigidity, confinement, physical and mental detachment; gradually it incorporates the environment and claustrophobia of small spaces in it. My recent paintings are a blend of bold colours, patterns and ambiguity in them for the viewer to come up with their own conclusions. For me as an artist, art becomes a source to keep myself balanced and positive, it helps me channelise my experiences on canvas, about how I deal with Cerebral Palsy. My immediate goals as an artist are to establish myself as an international artist, I would want to open an art gallery for talented people and especially give disabled artists a chance to recognize and express their potential.”