March 30, 2002

Perhaps the most definitive aspect of Usman Saeed’s work is his lyrical line that swoops up into calligraphic flourishes, fans out into tiny delicate ink smudges or playfully piques the eyes as it arranges itself into an interesting juxtaposition of space and shapes. Yet, it never jars.

Usman Saeed’s exhibition, Beliefs and Desires at Chawkandi Art in Karachi was dedicated to his mother, who recently passed away. The exhibition was a homecoming of sorts for the Lahore-based NCA graduate (1999), who had become too embroiled in his professional fashion photography to give time to painting.

The work was cerebral in nature, drawing on varying influences, thoughts, flights of imagination distilled and couched into symbolic images. Incidents from the artist’s environment enriched his work. His mother’s memory, brother’s marriage, sister’s thesis, all bubbled up in one form or the other. Other themes included contemporary issues, such as abortion, dowry, etc., which seemed a bit trite.

The exhibition was an exploration of various avenues, though it overwhelmingly built on an ethos of Persian miniature, with elements of Islamic art, use of line pattern and design, together with calligraphy used as an element of design. A section of the work was, however, heavily influenced by Japanese prints, which follow the tradition of minimalist images in monochrome whose linear quality creates an interesting juxtaposition of space with lyrical lines.

Saeed, working in NCA’s printmaking department, seemed to have been inspired by the students’ playing around with Japanese ink-cuts. An interesting series of untitled works of rang on paper resulted, where he played around with a blottish formless shape transforming itself from a tree’s foliage atop lyrically delicate trunks into a seemingly invading smudge to a hairstyle, and on to a cloud on the horizon with birds hovering above.

Saeed’s drawings in pencil are teasingly spontaneous. The Khatam is perhaps the most fetching with a playful pattern created by a scattering of shoes of various shapes and sizes set off by the rhythmic repetition of the word khatam in a line running across behind.

“Miniature sorely needs a revival,” he says, “We need to make it contemporary, most people still look for the malika in it, although the public is becoming educated.”

And so he set himself to the task of putting miniature painting in a contemporary setting, even though he was never formally trained in the art beyond the basics.