LAHORE: Nabila Yasmin and Hira Mansur two emerging miniature painters are holding a two person show at the renowned Rohtas 2 gallery, in the heart of Model Town’s suburbs.
Where as Nabilas work, deeply introspective, indulges in the intricate, close to heart issues. Hira with her work and the usage of piercing conveys a whole different meaning through her work.
Immersed in objects, crisp in output: Hira Mansur’s work is a showcase of a keen eye and well thought endurance to her chosen art form. Animals, sewing machines, scissors, free flowing water form not only the elements but also the crux of her art.
Hira’s work is somewhat reminiscent of fashion magazines with clear, crisp, and smooth rendering of textures and very careful, precise placement of them. Sewing machines with integrated animal heads are the focal point of her piece Obscure Existence, with the artist classily placing the elements together to propose a variable form of existence.
These works have somewhat of a surreal feel to them with distant unrelated objects in close proximity and association with each other. The aesthetically pleasing blank negative areas within the work help in keeping the viewer focused on its’ subject.
Hira appears a visual narrator: her work opens up through focusing on them, slowly steadily but surely these works reveal their true nature to the viewer.
Subjective, introspective and nostalgic: Nabila Yasmin unlike the former deals with her work in a subjective manner. Her subjects are very close to her self often at some points indulging the viewer into childhood nostalgia.
Old age, dreams, closure with elders, desires, the role of women in our close knit yet judgmental society, coming of age and the advent of death. The usage of black wasli (archival paper) as the background also adds to the overall stupor.
Vacant rooms, hauntingly realistic figures with detailed patterns (even in the clothes they are wearing), balloons, cloth lines are all symbolic subsidies that come together to create the amalgamation of work.
Her work is immaculate and intricate at the same time, moving from work to work you can actually witness the evolution of not only the work but of the person to which the art belongs to.
Nabila has the unique gift of transporting the viewer through her work into the heart of the picture. The emotions, strength, weakness, dreams, darkness, desires are not only of the figures in the composition but also of the individual itself.
Brightly clad women, some trying to set themselves free while other consort to the norms around them, similar connotations can be seen in works that work with the sheer ferocity of a two edged sword, on one side symbolizing the affection of one generation to another while somewhere underling the generation gap prevailing in today’s society.
Where as Hira works on the root of things, Nabila’s work is like ant hill with deep burrows and tunnels underneath.
Touching nostaligic novelty: With titles such as An Activity, Jumping Jumping, Murgh Kahani and Urh Gaya, Nabila touches rather relishes upon subjects of nostalgic novelty, that each and everyone of us has both witnessed and felt at one place or the other.
Humble abodes, summer afternoons, grandmothers, their small irreplaceable charms are the things that are somewhat part of our subconscious if not unconscious.
These contemporary miniatures by Hira are something off a visual diary, distant memoirs, echoing voices of the past and the not so long a go present, scattered here and there little secluded parts of the individuals very self.
Nabila on the other side walks a path of her own design piercing her, painting there, achieving mastery of rendering and rendition along the path. Obscure Existence, Procrastinating, Harnessed are titles that not only suit the works but also give an insight into the thought process that went into the creation of these pieces.
Pouring rain and Pouring are two such works by Hira that place her among artistic genius of her medium with brilliant craftsmanship and indigenous ideas these two might easily be called the focal points of the exhibition.
These two women no doubt walk parallel not only in artistic capabilities but also in their control over the skill and its contemplation as an art form.
Like day and night not only do the colors of their works resound into blacks and whites but there are also areas where its hard to differentiate one body of work from the other.
A gaze at the works of the two one can only presume rather hope that this paralleled journey is only the start of a journey that will indulge both of them into creating more works of representing their subtle skill.
