Solo show: A feast of roses
Artist’s work explores unsettling realities
Sheherezade Alam shares her expertise with the participants. PHOTO: PR
LAHORE:
In a solo exhibition underway at Rohtas II Art Gallery, artist Anum Lashari’s work speaks about the anxiety and moods that overcome a person just before they fall asleep.
The exhibition features four oil on canvas pieces and two art installations fashioned using real roses on lasani sheets and marble. The artist said she had been working with the idea of anxiety, fragility of life and how they stoked a sense of restlessness since the very beginning. Titled The Pursuit of Being—the exhibition portrays female characters against a variety of backgrounds—from the comfort of a bed or sofa to something dreamlike.
Lashari said she had tried to depict both, the solitude and bipolarity of human existence to question the relationship between physical comfort and peace of mind. The artist said her work was mostly premised on sleep and death. Shedding light on working with real roles, Lashari said she had picked each flower according to whatever she had felt on that particular day. About selecting roses as the main motif in her work, she said she had started using them as a metaphor for life because they wilted quickly. “Another thing I found really fascinating about roses is that they are used on joyous occasions and on deaths and graves. This greatly correlates with what I have been trying to say,” Lashari said. Explaining the concept behind another installation featuring a pillow and a marble tombstone, the artist said the piece was inspired by Greek mythology. Wherein, she said, the pillow connoted rest and the tombstone the final rest. “For me, sleep is the hardest part. Specifically, (the time just) before one falls asleep and is overcome with unsettling thoughts. Everybody does that and that is what my work has tried to explore,” Lashari said. The artist said she would like to believe that the anxiety that ran through her had been part of every human’s experience at one point of time or another. “I don’t believe it is possible for a person to live their entire life without seriously pondering over some questions before falling asleep,” Lashari added. She said she had also tried to hint towards the fragility of life and how one walked this ground with a sense of a gaping void underneath ready to devour them.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 27th, 2016.
In a solo exhibition underway at Rohtas II Art Gallery, artist Anum Lashari’s work speaks about the anxiety and moods that overcome a person just before they fall asleep.
The exhibition features four oil on canvas pieces and two art installations fashioned using real roses on lasani sheets and marble. The artist said she had been working with the idea of anxiety, fragility of life and how they stoked a sense of restlessness since the very beginning. Titled The Pursuit of Being—the exhibition portrays female characters against a variety of backgrounds—from the comfort of a bed or sofa to something dreamlike.
Lashari said she had tried to depict both, the solitude and bipolarity of human existence to question the relationship between physical comfort and peace of mind. The artist said her work was mostly premised on sleep and death. Shedding light on working with real roles, Lashari said she had picked each flower according to whatever she had felt on that particular day. About selecting roses as the main motif in her work, she said she had started using them as a metaphor for life because they wilted quickly. “Another thing I found really fascinating about roses is that they are used on joyous occasions and on deaths and graves. This greatly correlates with what I have been trying to say,” Lashari said. Explaining the concept behind another installation featuring a pillow and a marble tombstone, the artist said the piece was inspired by Greek mythology. Wherein, she said, the pillow connoted rest and the tombstone the final rest. “For me, sleep is the hardest part. Specifically, (the time just) before one falls asleep and is overcome with unsettling thoughts. Everybody does that and that is what my work has tried to explore,” Lashari said. The artist said she would like to believe that the anxiety that ran through her had been part of every human’s experience at one point of time or another. “I don’t believe it is possible for a person to live their entire life without seriously pondering over some questions before falling asleep,” Lashari added. She said she had also tried to hint towards the fragility of life and how one walked this ground with a sense of a gaping void underneath ready to devour them.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 27th, 2016.