A collective homage to the struggle quintessential to women’s lives

The Canvas Gallery in Karachi is holding an art exhibition that is titled ‘Green Matter’ and features the works of Wardha Shabbir until Saturday, July 24, 2021.

According to the artist, the path continues to guide her visual research into the space around her, while she takes reference from the physical markings of the world and the non-physical realm of the mind.

“Having used the surrounding spaces as a continuity of my canvas, I have moved on to create new spaces within the paintings themselves, in the form of passages, enclosures and, sometimes, even light.”

She constructs these maps, not just to familiarise herself with these spaces but also to subconsciously navigate through the past and future as a means of returning to the self.

“The foliage, forming relations with points and lines, engages and disengages with the surface to formulate organic geometry expressing a perceptual journey. With provocative elements of my subjective experience I create an interactive imagery that unveils itself gradually to the observer’s eye, stimulating their senses at first and, finally, reaching them through their own visual vocabulary.”

She aims to incite a thought-provoking process of demystification through the rendering of hauntingly beautiful visuals that persist in the mind. “Through this artistic pursuit I pay a collective homage to the struggle that is quintessential to women’s lives.”

Taking forward the technique learnt during her years of practising miniature painting, influenced by the gardens from her surroundings and contemporary architecture, the organic compositions portray a plethora of women’s experiences.

“The abundance of growth, morphing into elaborate motifs emulates the unfathomable contours of female imagination. Vivid hues illustrate the strength and vitality of feminine emotion.”

Within these paradisical visuals she has carefully embedded symbols of loss and despair, but also hope and survival. “There is infinitude in a person’s isolated journey, in following a path that has an end in itself. A path that multiplies, wavers, even breaks but reconciles over and over again.”

She says that etiolating flora among flourishing growth represents death in the path, as it is through death that one learns to live again. This contradictory state of awareness, living while dying at the one and the same time, paves the journey to self-realisation, she adds.

“Through my work I urge women to dissociate with their silence and break free from the concrete confines of the world to recognise the endless possibilities and potential of their existence.”

Pahari miniature

According to Nour Aslam, artistic director at the Rangoonwala Foundation, Wardha studied the classical form of miniature painting from the Pahari school, which dates back to the 17th century.

“Mastering this timeless, classical form of art, she then wondered how it would translate accessibly to our current contemporary landscape. She presents her answer to this question in [her latest] exhibition.”

Nour says Wardha began with a rumination on the Google Map journeys that help her physically navigate her life, a concept we have all become dependent on, thanks to the invention of smartphones.

“They manifest in the winding zigzag forms we see repeated in her work. For Wardha the path she has created through this form becomes a source of mysticism representing how we lead our lives on a daily basis, more specifically how we have changed during this time of Covid-19.”

Nour says Wardha updates Pahari miniature through her palette, as extreme oranges, greens and reds connect her narrative to the modern day. “Colour becomes a metaphor for navigation; as she dissects traditional systems of viewing miniature art through new visual pathways, she encourages her audience to deconstruct their own journeys and struggles.”

This, adds Nour, relates to the deep ramifications Pakistan has felt as a consequence of Covid-19 and development. “Lahore, which was dubbed the City of Gardens during the Mughal Empire, has faced several violent cultural changes in the urban landscape, particularly through the new constructions of large motorways.”

Nour says that a nostalgia for what was manifests in Wardha’s work as she dreams of the greenery that once was, while confronting us with the chaos facing contemporary audiences — especially women.

“Entangled shrubberies trace the chaotic path women take as they seek some route as a modern day woman, fulfilling roles as mothers and caretakers, while acknowledging the need to protect themselves from violence in the wake of rising sexual assaults within the nation.”

Aesthetically beautiful, Wardha’s works mask deeper meanings, says Nour, adding that they draw viewers into her deconstruction of modern day chaos and the complexity of the contemporary female role in Pakistan.

“Presenting struggle through pleasing form and colour, she succinctly presents the struggle for balance women strive for today, a concept that resonates both at home in Pakistan and around the world.”

Intuitive cycle

The exhibition also includes a video, which, according to Wardha, is an outburst of emotions and giving hope to survival for the victim of the 2020 Motorway gang rape case.

“The flowing mass of green signifies a human being’s potential to resist and a pursuit to survive. In trying to possess the physical world, we inevitably give in to the insurmountable casualties of life.”

She says that the paths we take betray us, and the imponderable weigh our anonymous hearts down. “Dreams remain unrealised, and a mere sense of them lingers. Suffering, on the other hand, is found and encountered in abundance. These experiences, while inherent in human existence, have the tendency to stimulate an intuitive cycle.”

Wardha says that utilising its true potency, the mind fortifies an eternal paradise and its confines are limited only by our silence. It plies laboriously in isolation, carefully replacing elements of loss and bereavement with hope and replenishment, she adds.

“These lived external experiences of the world pave a path toward our self-perpetuating existence. An internal reliance for survival provokes an awareness of how we had to live, and how we could live. Ideas start to take precedence over ideals, and, thus, begin an irreversible journey of empowerment.”

And, she points out, it seems that new grass grows to replace the old, dying grass: “her breathing forceful, and her movement deliberate. The light, rooted and radiating from deep within her soul, nourishes the topsoil, and the river flows seamlessly. She becomes fearless as the idea of a complete self is born, recurring and renewed each time through the green paradise of her mind.”

Profile

A visual practitioner and contemporary miniaturist, Wardha lives and works in Lahore. She graduated from Lahore’s prestigious National College of Arts (NCA) with a Bachelor’s in Fine Arts (Honours) in 2011, meriting the Principal’s Honour Award.

During her academic career at the NCA, she was awarded numerous scholarships and grants as well as selected for an exchange programme in Paris, with the Ecole des Beaux-Arts (2006-10).

Additionally, she received the Best Young Artist Award from Lahore’s Al Hamra Gallery in 2011. She is also an educator, teaching at her alma mater since 2013, and currently holding the position of visiting assistant professor.

Since graduating, she has exhibited widely on national and international platforms. She was the first artist from Pakistan selected for FLACC Belgium, where she initiated a research-based experiment on the human sensorium while transforming a two-dimensional miniature painting into a three-dimensional interactive environment.

In 2016 she participated in the Summer Intensive programme at London’s Slade School of Fine Art. She has also exhibited at the Dhaka Art Summit (2014), Scope (Basel), Contemporary Istanbul (2011), Abu Dhabi Art (2020), India Art Fair (2012 and 2019) and numerous other group exhibitions.

Her solo exhibitions include ‘In a Free State’ at London’s Grosvenor Gallery (2019), ‘The Space Within’ at the Canvas Gallery (2018), ‘Of Trees and Other Beings’ at Lahore’s Rohtas II (2016) and ‘Many Metamorphoses’ at Rohtas II (2012).

Wardha was among the finalists for the esteemed Jameel Prize 5 (2018) at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, where her work was exhibited, and travelled to other venues, including Dubai’s Jameel Arts Centre (2019).

She was nominated twice for the Sovereign Asian Art Prize (2019 and 2020). Her work is in well-reputed private and corporate collections in Switzerland, Berlin, Dubai and Abu Dhabi, as well as various prominent collections in Pakistan, India, the UK, the US and Canada.