Hot on the market: ‘Meaningful without being grotesque’

Talat Dabir exhibits her drawings for the first time in over 40 years.

LAHORE:

It is artist Talat Dabir’s first attempt at drawing parallels between women and birds. Both, she says, are prone to captivity and spending their lives striving for independence.

It is also the first time Dabir has exhibited her drawings in her artistic career spending more than 40 years, in addition to sculptures.

The exhibit titled Metamorphosis, features 23 ink drawings and 21 sculptures. A few of the pieces are also about the war-torn South Waziristan and street protests, a popular way of registering public anger in Pakistan.

“Creating art is a form of catharsis. Most of my work is spontaneous rather than a deliberate one,” says the veteran sculptor, who has headed the fine arts department at the National College of Arts for years. Drawing, to her, is a “fundamental form of art”.

The grotesque in art disturbs her, Dabir tells The Express Tribune. “I wanted to create art [that makes] a bold statement on the current political situation but also looks pretty,” she says. She had not painted miniatures, she says, but has tried to achieve the “essence” and the detailing characteristic of miniature. For two of the drawings, she washed the paper with tea before using an ink pen to draw displaced people in war zones. In another, a number of heads and torso occupy a large chair depicting a public gathering. “People have nowhere to be. It is frustrating. So they [participate] in [such] events,” Dabir says.

The sketch in which a woman is sitting in a wooden frame with a nest in her lap suggests “a woman’s way of protecting herself,” according to the artist. Cataclysm 2, another drawing, depicts the displacement in towns and villages in northern Pakistan.

The pieces are priced between Rs20,000 and Rs50,000.

Dabir plans to display the pieces in Islamabad once the exhibition at the Colour Art Gallery ends on March 2.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 26^th, 2013.