eschehen is a German word that translates to happening or occurrence. Conceptually, it could refer to the process of becoming, where one can find meaning and continuation. In his book titled Being and Time, Heidegger unpacks the meaning of this term. He emphasises that geschichte or one’s story is an ongoing process that refers to our engagement with the world. Geschehen can then be considered as a kind of life-affirming force, implying that the unfolding of time is embedded in our encounters with our surroundings. Perhaps such stimuli can also be regarded as a productive force. Our existence, after all, is not static. We are not passive beings. The process by which our perceptions and environment shape our lives enables one to forge new paths.

Nashmia Haroon’s series of oil and pigment paintings is evocative of a similar world view. Her new body of work, titled Microcosm-Macrocosm A Painted Universe of the Heart, offers a sensory experience in abstraction that is rife with an implacable energy that manifests itself either in the form of riotous, dizzying encounters with colour or through an intensity of layers, strokes, dribbles and daubs that are suggestive of various tenors and cadences that are both expansive and (at times) stifling. The artist’s statement for the solo exhibition suggests that her inspiration comes from natural landscapes such as rivers, forests and mountains. Although these associations help frame and translate the work in relation to the sublime in landscape painting - the influence is apparent - but perhaps a mystical/ supernatural lens that links the sacred and the profane also somewhat limits our appreciation of the work. It appears far more convenient to imagine and use limpid pools of glacial water, shimmering stalactites and flaming fields of red swaying in the wind as entryways into the abstract work while strolling through the gallery space but Haroon’s fascination with the world and its perception is inextricably tied to her own experience i.e. her sensory process is informed by her experiences. This may explain why certain paintings appear to crackle with an energy that threatens to engulf the canvas it is painted on while others have a more subdued tenor.

In one of his writings on phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty explores how invisible experiences shape perception. Ponty uses concepts like depth, colour and sensory experience to elaborate on these ideas. So what way of “being” is disclosed in Haroon’s work? Many of her abstract compositions animate space in such a way that they appear to be responding to a mood or rhythm. Although colour is not an inert tool in Haroon’s work, it is her intuitive experiences that become the principal catalyst for this painterly exploration. There is a certain intentionality and mapping of a visual logic contained even in the dense layers, despite what appears to be a devil-may-care, brash spontaneity in many pieces. Perhaps this is because memory does dictate choices and perception. Cerulean and powder blue dilutions explode, bleed and fade into nothingness, but total resolution is halted in some parts. It is punctuated by shifting hues, broad sweeps of colour and a staccato of aggressively layered textures and marks. The largest vertical canvas towers mutinously above the viewers in the gallery. Its scale appears monumental, and with good reason. One sees a fierce cacophony of post-apocalyptic strokes, eruptions of organised chaos, broad sweeps of the artist’s hand, striations that seem to conjure up associations with tornadoes and windswept conglomerations of colour. The primacy of intuition and colour contributes to this vociferous symphony. Perhaps Rainer Maria Rilke captures this spirit in the way he describes one of Cezanne’s paintings when he writes that “In this hither and back of mutual and manifold influence, the interior of the picture vibrates, rises and falls back into itself, and does not have a single unmoving part…”

The key to understanding and interpreting this inherent dynamism in Haroon’s works does not then lie in identifying, describing or attempting to translate it into something tangible or worldly. Rather, one needs to attune oneself to the process of its transmutation so that one can trace the immediacy prompted by each stroke and drip. Some of this experience in watching Haroon’s work can be attributed to her enduring love of Western music and training in khyaal gaeki. While discussing her creative process, she mentions that “…being in the studio without music is an impossibility… The role of music in my life, in general, is and has always been pivotal to the point of not only inspiration but as an activation factor… endorphins are released through the act of singing but also at the time of mark making, painting, drawing onto a surface through listening…. It is what drives me, gives me free space to explore the subconscious mind… Sometimes I half-dream of images that I want to create and I hasten to act - to record and then transfer those onto the canvas. Each work is created spontaneously though there is no design…”

Haroon’s engagement with space and the visual and aural pushes bodily engagement with the canvas into a perceptual field. She points out that her ten-foot-long canvas painting was always meant to be vertical. However, the process of making it involved moving around it or placing it horizontally against the wall because her studio was not spacious enough to hold it erect. Perhaps that is why one does not merely “look” at the curtains of incandescent drips or uneven crevices formed by the pigments; there is no representation of space. Instead, a broad framework of senses is disclosed gradually. The viewer’s eye gradually begins to identify the reality surrounding her when she was painting the spaces and forms. The rhythm or “invisible space” shaped by musical nodes and intonations then becomes her subject matter.

Haroon’s art practice is varied. In her other work she has been more of a photographer and relied heavily on the documentary and “truth-telling” aspect of photography. Her trajectory as a painter has been informed by a more continuous flow of information. This has helped her inscribe musicality and colour as being caught between space and time.

Microcosm-Macrocosm: A Painted Universe of the Heart by Nashmia Haroon, a solo exhibition of paintings curated by Laila Rahman, opened on May 16, at Haam Gallery, Lahore, remained on display till June 5.

The writer is an art critic, art historian and visual artist currently teaching at the Department of Cultural Studies at NCA, Lahore.