Red: Carving & colouring timeless depiction of feminist issues

Islamabad
Carving and colouring, a timeless depiction of feminist issues under the title of 'Red', Pakistani artist Humaira Abid's work put on display at Khaas Art Gallery on Thursday brings on a vibrant visual experience reflecting a symbolic contrast of love, passion, anger, and death all in a creative blend. The artist attempts to explore and evoke the inner and outer realities of everyday life through her dynamic contemporary oeuvre.
The artist combines her miniaturist training and love of wood sculpting, for which she is well-known, to produce works that focus on feminist issues.
‘Red’ contemplates the female presence in Islamic society, with a special emphasis on the role of motherhood. Some of her inspiration goes beyond private concerns to speak of larger social problems.
Humaira Abid’s collection of work combines traditional miniature painting with wood sculpture. Her work examines women's roles, relationships, and taboos from a cross-cultural perspective. Picking up ordinary images from everyday life, Humaira makes them extraordinary through her creative skill and ideas. Her basic interest is situations in ‘relationships’ and their after effects. She turns, carves, constructs in wood with great skill and detailing.
A consummate illusionist, Humaira Abid uses pine, mahogany, black limba and other woods to create her eloquent everyday objects. In this particular show, she makes dramatic use of red wood stain, using the color to probe deep into issues of fertility and mortality. In one of her signature piece, Humaira laces two shoes together in such a way that no one could possibly walk in them. The cheerful, ruddy hue of the laces adds energy to the absurdity of the predicament portrayed.
A graduate from National College of Arts Lahore in 2000, Humaira majored in Sculpture, with Miniature as her double minor. Humaira joined NCA as a lecturer in 2001. Currently she is visiting Assistant Professor at National College of Arts and Beaconhouse National University, Lahore. Humaira lives and works in Lahore, Pakistan and Seattle, WA, USA.
Humaira Abid’s Sculptural ensemble can be equated with a story, a concept or an idea. It has evocative storytelling ability and evokes one’s senses in a way that is incomparable with the capacity inherent in two-dimensional art. With unique diversity and symbolic sense of connotation attached, Humaira’s art work shows her immense precision and a love for detail. Her work is stimulating, captivating, moving and exceptionally relatable. The ideas behind her work are ordinary, arising from her own experience and observation of family, marriage, motherhood and so on. Themes related to motherhood are recurrent in her work, and when asked about the reason, Abid conceded that her work was largely based on family.
Humaira Abid can make wood look as flexible as a rubber hot-water bottle or as hard as a cast-iron faucet. She can make it curve and curl — or turn into shoes and shoelaces. She can even transform it into a shirt, trousers, jacket and dress that hang with convincing limpness from stainless-steel hangers in an open clothes closet.
The crowning glory of this collection is the artist's keen ability to not only express joy through sculpture, but also depict pain and suffering. Mostly experimenting with Mahogany (sheesham) wood in her sculptures, Humaira not only manipulates the inherent graphic quality the kind of material she's using, but also attempts to use different techniques, such as carving with an axe and sandblasting, to ensure maximum detail.
Humaira Abid’s ‘Red’ would continue till February 25th at Khaas Art Gallery, House 1, Street 2, F-6/3.