rees have remained an integral motif in the art of Rathore, especially after her graduation from the National College of Arts (1995), and moving to the USA in 1998. The two first emerged in a pair or a group in 2002, with works like, Let Me Count the Ways and Stories of Survival.

A customs officer at an international airport regularly examines bags of immigrants, and discovers stuff of practical use, of emotional value, objects of memory, crucial item (drugs, etc) and things that a traveller is certain not to find at his/ her new homeland. Passengers carry tiny, cheap, worn-out trinkets across continents and beyond oceans. These serve as amulets, ensuring security during the long journey and adjusting to an alien environment.

Talha Rathore has chosen the tree to be a personal emblem, which not only reminds us of her home, but also several other associations. First and foremost: it refreshes the painter’s link to Mughal miniature painting, hence to a specific culture, legacy and aesthetics. It also symbolises loneliness, endurance and resistance against harsh surroundings, as well as loyalty (to a piece of land); and continuity of life due to its cycle of spring and autumn. In an earlier series, Rathore has put the tree (derived from historic miniatures) on the subway plan of New York City. Despite its oddity, the visual displacement, fantasy and frustration the image had at least one logic: trees travel deep down into the soil, and the subway lies below the ground.

Rathore’s previous imagery could be an attempt towards trans-planting herself at her adopted country. However, in her new work, trees assume another role. At her recently concluded solo exhibition, Shades of Tranquillity (November 17-28, Chawkandi Art, Karachi) the tree is liberated from the map of an underground train network. It seems oblivious to its background, as it leans, bends, intertwines, turns and twists against a mute backdrop of pale yellow.

If one dissects certain surnames of merchant community from Karachi, Mumbai and the Indian state of Gujarat, one deciphers that items or routes of family business were/ are transformed into surnames: Bandukia, Bundookwala, Tyrewala, Bottliwala, Attarwala, Japanwala, Dudhwala and so forth. To an extent, the practice is also replicated in Pakistani art. A number of individuals are identified by making and selling images of one or another animal for years. A horse, or mouse, elephant, goat, dog, cat, cockroach, flies are a few identification marks some of our artists have acquired. An old master of Pakistani art is recognised by his repeated rendering of horse; several miniature painters have been drawing elephants in their works. Some focus on goats, others depict dogs, or cats; the list keeps expanding.

Rathore’s previous imagery could be an attempt towards trans-planting herself at her adopted country. However, in her new works trees assume another role. At her recently concluded solo exhibition, Shades of Tranquillity (November 17-28, 2022, at Chawkandi Art, Karachi), the tree is liberated from the map of an underground train network.

In that context, one suspects that the tree is turning into a trademark for Talha Rathore. Trees have been present for the last 20 years in her paintings, but what distinguishes Rathore from her contemporaries is that she has not picked this pictorial element as a pet or a package. Her situation of being an immigrant at a distant and different location has to do with her preference for tree being the central image in art. She may identify with a tree not from her direct observation, for instance not banyan, oak, mahogany, eucalyptus, birch or pine etc; but a specie rooted in the tradition of miniature painting; a product of historic imagination.

Interestingly, in Rathore’s new work the stylised trees are not embedded in the ground, or placed on a map. These are cropped at the edge of a floral border – in the continuation of miniature paintings. Talha Rathore’s choice of making her tree not fixed in a land could be unplanned, unconscious, unnoticed, but it demands a close scrutiny. Just the fact, that these trees are composed within a picture frame against a neutral background, indicates that tree is more of a formal fascination rather than an existential presence/ reason/ crisis.

In her recent works, the tree assumes independence, almost acquiring human characteristics. These delicate creatures/ species sway or swirl; and have a foliage composed of tiny segments – looking like leaves or peapods. Actually, a spectator could read them as seeds or eyes, too.

In her statement, the artist reflects about these tiny forms; “battalions of little enigmas wandering on the surface embody a sense of malleability – an inner life that we don’t see, but can perceive.” We don’t see cells of human or any other organic body, neither are we aware of what happens when a seed in the darkness of earth erupts to produce a stem, eventually a fully grown plant/ tree (a life cycle not dissimilar to humans).

I am frequently tempted to mention the tree as he, she, they, them, yet I refrain myself, respecting the English idiom. Talha Rathore does not deal with such restraints. In her art, the tree ceases to be a combination of bark, trunk, branches, leaves, foliage, flowers, fruit; it substitutes human presence. There are trees in various arrangements, settings, states; in the company of another plant (Solace I &III), or twirling with a dominant red shade on their body (Exuberance I, II, III, IV). Whether in tranquil hues of green and blue or turbulent tones of red, trees in her compositions represent a variety of human beings, their emotions, positions, relations and freedom.

In the past, the tree was a metaphor Talha Rathore used for displacement; but after a period of more than 20 years a symbol needs to be revised and reinvented. Thus, in her quest, Rathore has reached out to the basics, to seeds – in a sequence of seven paintings (each titled Sowing Seeds with separate numbers). A dominant single form in diverse situations: a pair which seems to be in conversation, or in action; or a group of four. Drawn from various angles, the large seeds are surrounded by, or composed of tiny (eye-like) seeds in various formations/ quantities.

Paintings comprising trees and seeds are important in the private history of the artist, but also significant in our current political/ cultural scenario. Trees in Talha Rathore’s work do not remind one of their place of origin, they refer to the present state of (ethnic, political, cultural) disorientation, in a vocabulary that is contemporary and accessible no matter what you call it: modern miniature, Neo-miniature, revivalist, revisionist.

The writer is an art critic based in Lahore