Choosing human and animal forms in a bold imagery portraying power struggle as a tug of war, two young female artists, Nadia Tufail and Beenish Usman, have managed to convey their message vividly through their miniature art at Khaas Gallery.
Exploring the finer shades of contemporary styles in miniature, both artists seem to have taken that extra mile in employing their creative energies in breaking the unseen barriers erected by the socio-political enigma surrounding our lives like a dark cloud.
With the title of exhibition ‘Impediment’, Beenish and Nadia also explore how class conflict generates and how the ‘impediment’ produces class disparity.
Nadia Tufail, in her cache of paintings, questions the existence of a ‘superpower’ and challenges its reality by inquiring who superpower is. Following her creative curiosity, Nadia argues the meaningless quagmire in pursuit of power and says, “I do not understand who is fighting and who is not, but I can feel that everyone is fighting to nobody and nobody is fighting to everyone.” But instead of going haywire, she turns to her creative self and tries to explore peace within her own utopia while the world sleeps. “I feel peaceful when everyone is sleeping,” said Nadia while trying to explain her creative thoughts and the path she has chosen to find peace. Nadia has done BFA from GC University, Faisalabad, (2004- 2008). With the four-year experience in miniature painting and drawing, Nadia works extensively in print making, sculpture painting, wall painting, photography, oil painting, and calligraphy, simultaneously, to quench her creative thirst while working with colours, textures and lighting.
Beenish Usman has done BFA from National College of the Arts, Lahore, (2006-2009). By giving the title of “Sublime” to her work, Beenish explores how uncanny and unseen barriers are becoming a part of our daily life routine that is making us slaves of the materialistic world.
Beenish, while talking to Pakistan Today, said, “In search of a secure environment, we are being pushed into more insecurity by the socio-political situation that is creating human absence in our surroundings and environment. For Beenish’s aesthetic sensitivity, it is very scary and an extreme point to think about expressing an appreciation of the fearful and irregular forms of external nature.
Beenish finds reality of the experience of her journey of daily life at once a pleasure to the eyes as music is to the ears, but “mingled with horrors, and sometimes almost with despair”.
For Beenish, her title ‘Sublime’ and her paintings carry the same meaning like awakening or expressing the emotion of awe, adoration, veneration, and heroic resolve at the same time that could be said of an impressive object in nature, of an action, of a discourse, of a work of art, of a spectacle, or the same connotation carried by a sublime scenery or a sublime deed. The exhibition would continue at Khaas Gallery (House No 1, St 2, F-6/3), till November 28.
