More from contemporary Pakistani artists…
Faiza Butt (1973) MFA Slade School of Fine Art, University College, London
If there is an artist who uses paradox as a means of expression, it is Faiza Butt.
Her idea of feminism is articulated by images of hypermasculine men, with beards, reminiscent of Taliban who repressed women and mullahs and who continue to endeavor to enact laws against the freedom of women.
In her paintings, which are actually a series of very fine dots that simulate a practice in miniature painting called ‘pardakths’ and is also found in western impressionistic art as pointillism, she builds up images teeming with a cornucopia of food and everyday items painted lustfully. The panoply of commercial objects is significant of our own aspirations, even when we may spout notions of spirituality and godliness.
Ghulam Mohammad (1989) BFA Beaconhouse National University, Lahore
Ghulam Mohammad is a spectacular visual artist and each of his works of art are visually dramatic.
He has formulated a technique by which he collects old newspapers and books and painstakingly cuts out each alphabet and reconstructs a collage in which he pastes miniscule alphabets within a tight framework.
The constructs are themselves meaningful, sometimes incorporating a word and other times an abstract landscape. The letters thus taken out of their original context become meaningless and are used for their form only and the emphasis shifts from language to surface tactility and texture, upending the idea of linguistic importance.
More next week…
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