Transcending space: Sana Kazi showcases blurred reality

LAHORE:

Spatial Transcendence, a solo show by Sana Kazi, has started at Rohtas 2 Art Gallery. The exhibition will continue until October 11.

Kazi says, “I work in layers upon layers, erasing, reinventing and discovering images that I create on my surface.”

“Diffused and blurred, the images seem to transcend space. They depict reality, but only a partial reality,” she said. “The power of an image is ambiguous. Attaching meaning to images is an open-ended process. At a glance it might seem sedentary, but on viewing it carefully, it becomes less objective than one had originally assumed,” said Kazi.

“I paint with ash and draw with a graphite pencil, using dashes of colour and sometimes treating parts of the image with gouache. This is a traditional technique of miniature painting called pardakht (literally to grow or develop). My ideas originate in the photographs that I take. Then I translate these photographs on to the wasli (a hand-made paper),” she says.

“My aim is to bring together contradictions in a subtle manner. I combine some unorthodox materials on the wasli. Materials such as ash, brick powder, sawdust and white cement have never been used on the wasli before,” she says.

“I try to portray what I feel and see around me. My fascination with the classical arts is reflected in my work. The mediums that I use allow me to recreate the timeless beauty and aesthetics of the Renaissance era,” said Kazi.

She said that the hand-pressed photo transfers on ash-covered surfaces transformed the painting.

“The grey images lead the viewer to an intuitive conception of the painted subject. This is where I leave the painting and whatever I have tried to reveal. It is the viewer who has to determine its true meaning, the way he chooses to see,” she said.

“I never assert my conclusions in my work. I do not want to limit the meaning conveyed in my work. The meaning of my work, like that of all human effort, is limitless, ever-changing and shifting in space,” she said.

“We must try to understand the internal uncertainty which is the same as the uncertainty of the external. We are always trying to find the truth. Why not the untrue and the uncertain as well?” said Kazi.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 28^th, 2014.