A fascinating painting exhibition titled “Metaphors in Black” opens today (Friday) at Gallery 6. The two female artists whose work goes on display are Humera Ghaznavi from Islamabad and Lila Khan from Connecticut, USA. Humera Ghaznavi held her first solo show in 1994 at Clodion Art Café, Oslo, Norway and since then she has held 24 exhibitions in different countries, which is a significant achievement.
She has participated in group shows in Jordan and Tajikistan through PNCA and has held solo shows in Houston and California, USA, and in cities of Norway. In Pakistan, she has exhibited in leading galleries of Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore. Discussing her artwork in this exhibition, Humera said: “To me, these drawings are about evolving within my personal limitations, yet touching the intangible with a medium I choose to express them with.
The concept of a multi-verse in which humanity exists is the intangible to which I am trying to give a shape through these drawings, a frustrating endeavour, since an artist’s medium always has a limit.” She said the black, white and overall colourless nature of her works represents the duality humanity has fallen into; good and evil, right and wrong, day or night. “People are distant and compartmentalised in their current realities, and until they merge and emerge onto a higher plane, humanity as a whole will not evolve,” she added.
Humera’s lines are spontaneous, pulsating and full of energy. The pen begins the journey at some point on the page and continues to move un-interruptive until it completes the narration. Each drawing has a story behind it, leading to interesting imagery with manipulations of symbols and objects. Lila Khan was born in Oneonta, New York in 1987 and graduated cum laude from Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, in 2010 with a bachelor’s degree in Technical Theatre and Studio Arts.
In her four years of training in arts, she studied drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, digital art, art history; and focused on pen and ink work in Advanced Studio studies. All this experience is well reflective in her work in the current exhibition, which is her first exhibition in Pakistan. Lila enjoys journalising and has over twenty completed journals to date, and all her art stems from these journals.
Talking about her work, Lila said “I started working in the format of miniatures when I wanted to express something that I thought I shouldn’t or that I didn’t want anyone to find out about. Drawing out secrets, confessions, or thoughts that I dwell on is a way of getting them out of my head.” Lila is fond of symmetry and repetition and tends to gravitate toward drawing images that are comforting like jam jars, teapots and bathtubs and using them as vessels to contain more repugnant images, or sometimes vice versa. She aspires to use this contrast in her works to represent the polarities that people have within themselves.
“These artists have lived in two different cultures, yet there is interesting resemblance in their themes. In their work, I find that both artists draw out forbidden statements that they cannot express verbally or in writing, hence, use metaphors to unburden themselves in a very imaginative way. Black predominates in all works,” said Dr Arjumand Faisal, the curator of the show. The exhibition will continue till August 12 at House 624, Street 44, G-9/1, daily from 11 am to 7 pm (5 pm in Ramazan). The good news for art lovers is that the gallery remains open 7 days a week.
