The crisis of woman: A searching exhibition

The town is teeming with art exhibitions. Not to be left behind in the race is the Alliance Francaise which hosted an exhibition on women and their social dilemmas on Wednesday.The artist Amber Arifeen, a poised, charming young lady, has brought out the crisis of identity women face in our social milieu.

All the 17 paintings adorning the walls of the Alliance’s art gallery are those of women in various poses, various situations, depicting their dilemmas. The common denominator among all these paintings is that all the women are faceless.

Their faces and facial features have been erased and reduced to mere orbs, connoting thereby the crisis of identity women have to grapple with. The facelessness is connotative of inner strife.

One of the paintings shows a woman lying on the bathroom floor. This is a depiction of a common real life situation whereby women seek privacy to vent when tormented by an issue which is too personal and cannot be confided in with anybody else.

 The artist has really succeeded in conveying a very delicate theme. This actually, if we delve deeper into it, is a very common situation, whereby people seek to vent in privacy when a problem cannot be shared with someone.

 The obscured faces are supposed to connote a crisis of identity. “The social media has allowed us to be relatively independent,” says Arfeen.

“We get excited by fleeting ambitions only to suffer from passion burn-out. We despise society’s pressure to conform. We are talented and we know it. It weighs heavily on our shoulders to see our talents go waste,” she says, adding, “My work is the examination of this internal strife and what lies behind it.”

All her works are oils, charcoal, and coffee stain on canvas. It is a case of really masterly strokes. The exhibition runs up until September 21 and is a must-see, especially for those who are sensitively inclined and delve deep into human situations.