In a sense, all portraits are self-portraits. Drawn from observation, a work of art is a contract between the object of perception and the maker of the image; the maker often dominates.
In a portrait or figure painting executed by a master, the identity of the model disappears behind the grandeur of the artist’s persona, position and practice. The most famous painting of the world, Mona Lisa, which is the portrait of a living individual, is only recognised as a canvas by Leonardo da Vinci. Not many people are concerned about who Madam Lisa Giocondo, the woman who posed for the painting, was.
Historically, artists have rendered themselves on flat surfaces and in three-dimensional materials. But, in the age of modernism, there is a surge in the genre of self-portrait. With the receding appeal of narrative-based works, religious themes, or picturesque canvases, artists have started focusing on themselves -- a subject that hardly demands a subject. However, one can construct a biography of an artist based on the variations in his/her depiction. Advancing age, emotional states, shifts in mental condition, all seep into the lines, forms, colours and strokes.
Traditional self-portrait can be understood as a kind of selfie in today’s lingo. In this age of smart gadgets, a cell phone is ready to capture the identity of the beholder. This is not for personal consumption since that can easily be managed by staring at the mirror. It is meant for circulating on social media, among those who are doing the same, passionately and perpetually.
It was probably this growing craze to gaze at oneself through a mechanical device (described by a character in Rushdie’s novel Quichotte: "I look at my face in a mirror and it looks like not a face but a photograph of a face") that generated Self Portraits in the Age of the Selfie -- title of Lahore’s COMO Museum of Art’s second exhibition that began on August 31, and will continue till end November 2019.
The show includes works by those who live in the moment of temporary glory posting their pictures for their friends and general public, as well as those who have a temperament different from seeking this type of recognition, or by a painter who died before selfies and even cellular phone became widespread. One is surprised to see a self-portrait of Zarah Mariam (David) from 1968; and her portrait made by Colin David in the 1970s. The latter work is not strictly a self-portrait, but provokes a valuable debate about the nature of difference between being seen by oneself or by others. That if a person is in love, would he/she perceive him/her through the eyes of someone else, or if one is much attached to another person, one’s viewing of that individual is affected by him/her.
A self-portrait is not merely about presenting a resemblance with one’s physical features. It is a way of discovering the hidden features, buried characteristics and banished emotions. It also dissolves the difference of being a solitary individual and a part of a larger society. All of this is witnessed in various formats and on varying levels at COMO.
Here one comes across multiple approaches towards a theme that has been exhausted since the day the first person noticed her reflection in the still waters of some pond. The notion of self often led to others, or to other dimensions of one’s existence, like in the circular concave mirror of Sadequain, rotating so slowly that its movement is hardly registered. Standing in front, one encounters one’s self reproduced in the mirror, yet most visitors avoid that confrontational experience. Something that one is reminded of again in Noor Ali Chagani’s Pixels of My Self, with tiny bricks lined inside an oval shape mirror, encased in a decorative frame.
Other participants have also dealt with the act of seeing. For instance, Suleman Khilji’s work -- a set of two pieces: Figure in a Landscape and Self & the Floating Objects --invites one to look into a block consisting of twin scenarios. It is well-lit and reveals a romantic-type setting accentuated by Urdu words such as Ishq.
Dua Abbas has created a complex composition, of the artist herself or some other woman, caught in surroundings, between reality and fantasy -- hence two subtly layered wings on the back of the protagonist.
The use of symbolic language is also cited in the painting by Mohsin Sheikh. A dominating alligator is meticulously and marvellously painted on white canvas. Under its shadow you can read a text that apparently describes the animal. Yet it could denote an artist, an art work, or even a critic: "My thick skin, scales, pointy teeth… still cannot defend me from turning into a luxury element for ye all."
Art, particularly in the period of market economy, has assumed a high value over the years, more so if it was created centuries ago. Like David by Michelangelo. The head of this well-known sculpture is appropriated in the Ambiguity of a Portrait by Noman Siddique, through stuffing it inside a stretched green balloon made of fibreglass that obliterates some parts and suggests a few features. The tension in the work also alludes to the tension of artistic tradition or its perception.
At COMO, one discovers how artists, mostly young, are formulating a new wave of image-making that has moved away from the issues of politics, identity, violence etc. and concerns itself with the immediate. The world is changing with each breaking news, by every advertisement, through each new product. In order to depict this scenario, most of these artists have experimented while focusing on something beyond their faces. Sajid Khan, for his Self Portrait, has drawn lines of graphite on a wall for seven hours, Saud Baloch in Udan, suspends piled up tiny houses tied with a balloon (made of Jesmonite) under the ceiling, suggesting the uncertainty of our existence.
This is also indicated by Ehsan Memon in his installation of multiple small sacks of varying measurements (forged in mixed media) which recall the history of Memon’s moving from one city to the next, from one house to another. The motif/idea of house appears in the work of Sameen Agha, too, a skeletal structure with a slanting roof covered with sensitive drawings of clouds and line of smoke in the air.
Agha’s attempt to combine the inside and outside can be connected to the canvas of Amna Rahman. Her piercing eyes are focused/fixed straight at the viewers, a state that unsettles the spectators, and almost operates like a mirror; because no matter how much you love looking at yourself, the contact with the mirror can often discomfort you. When you are in front of this remarkably painted portrait, you do take its aura with you. You get a similar haunting sensation standing in front of Self, a tiny self-portrait of Ali Sultan.
In two installations by Rabbya Naseer and Hurmutul Ain, and Aisha Bashir, the viewers are asked: "Please feel free… to take a card… or, a postcard home". The actual success of the current COMO show is that most of the visitors have managed to transport a lot more, may be the whole exhibition back to their lives, love and loneliness.