Viewing Rehana Mangi’s work at Karachi’s Canvas Gallery, one was reminded of local women artists who of late have used their hair as a feminist symbol. To many it represents precious time spent over the years brushing, washing and drying to ‘make a good impression’ on potential in-laws. In one group exhibition a couple of years ago, the participating artists cut off their lustrous locks and hung them on a gallery wall in plexi-glass, a relic of the past.
Mangi, who has a BFA in miniature painting from National College of Arts in 2007, has shown her work in group exhibitions in several countries abroad as well as in Pakistan over the last two years. In Karachi, one had the opportunity to view her work at the Gandhara Art Space, and marvel at the delicacy of her medium - fine threads of hair seemingly woven into the vasli. Her latest work seen at Canvas Gallery evokes Ad Reinhardt’s 1962 description of minimalist art: non-objective, non-figurative, non-representational, yet visually exquisite. How one longed for a microscope to examine at length such perfection.
The artist’s comment about her work is intriguing: “My work is about phases one goes through in a relationship…the complications confronted when the excitement withers away.”
Ahmed Ali Manganhar has shown his work previously at Canvas Gallery in exhibitions held in 2002-3, to an appreciative audience. On each occasion his work expressed a singular expression.
Now showing a collection of recent acrylic on canvas paintings, he reveals his interest in filmmaking with admirable use of the popular ‘Bollywood style’ poster images that portray the drama of popular stars and scenes, seen in tantalising glimpses.
The circular miniature portraits in the media of gadrang on vasli painted by Ahsan Jamal are from a series he began in 2004.
Here he has captured likenesses of people who have impressed him, such as a classical dance exponent he met in India, a friend’s young daughter dressed in her best, and men of character.
Jamal describes how interesting faces caught his imagination so that he has on occasion, taken one face from a group as his subject. A self-portrait is included in the collection, where he is looking serious in spectacles but with a youthful fringe of hair lightening the mood.
It was an unexpected, pleasurable experience to view a collaboration of two artists with very different methods working on one surface.
Munawar Ali, the multitalented sculptor, painter, draftsman and calligrapher, who has shown his work in diverse media in numerous workshops abroad and recently, had a successful show in Dubai, and his wife Shahana, who majored in printmaking and miniature art from NCA in 2001.
After graduation, Shahana worked on a series of prints using the symbolic core of emotion, the heart as central subject. Viewing his wife’s work recently Ali was struck with the idea that women are too emotional and not inclined to be cerebral, and with this in mind determined to add ‘brain’ to the heart.
With Shahana’s permission he began to paint images and create a background of assertive lines on the original prints, and the Yin and Yang aspect created a very interesting body of work. Shahana’s individual prints include collage and decorative aspects of miniature work that are highly individual. Ali, who covers great murals with graphite calligraphy and lines, adapted his style to the limited space in a way that suggested a concession to the heart after all.
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