Symbolising colours: Red defined through sculptures, paintings

Humaira Abid’s display of sculptures and paintings to continue till Feb 25 .

ISLAMABAD: An exhibition of sculptures and paintings by contemporary artist Humaira Abid is ongoing at Khaas Art Gallery.

Titled ‘Red’, the collection of artworks is symbolic of the colour and its various interpretations in different cultures and contexts.

For example, in the Indian Subcontinent, red is the traditional colour of bridal dresses and it also stereotypes married women in soaps, advertisements and films on the electronic media.

The colour is also associated with love and sensuality whereas in some parts of Africa, it is the colour of mourning and death as often related to the colour of blood.

To the Seattle-based artist, the colour represents strong emotions like love, loss, irony and resistance, which pour out from her thought-provoking art pieces.

The artist plays with this contrast to evoke inner and outer realities in carved wood sculpture and contemporary miniature painting.

She uses personal life as a metaphor for the contemporary art and sculpture narrative where one comes across everyday objects such as baby pacifiers, milk bottles, sewing machines, intertwined shoe-laces, flowers, locks of hair, razors and scissors. The fiery blood-red and mahogany offset by lighter tones of brown creates an intense and jarring impact on the viewer but perhaps that is what the artist set out to do in the first place.

A wooden takthi inscribed with pacifiers, has red slippers next to it. This may be a reference to the innocent lives lost to terrorist attacks in madrassas or schools.

Similarly, the depiction of blood dropping from a faucet is also an expression of gruesome bloodshed brought on by the volatile socio-political situation of the country.

“Reality in the hand of Humaira Abid is hard and humane,” said the art critic Quddus Mirza, adding that items of daily usage are transformed into solid materials, such as wood and metal.

Human beings establish a link with objects that is sensitive, sensuous, complex and often long-lasting, he stated further.

Barring the natural textures and surfaces of things carved into the collection, the sculptures are as hard and stiff as the essence of the suffocating feelings portrayed through the artworks.

The exhibition will continue till February 25 at House 1, Street 2, Sector F-6/3.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 16^th, 2015.