September 11, 2004

Noor Jehan Bilgrami’s latest offering exudes the artist’s love of organic material that, combined with a minimalist approach, has led her to create works of unparalleled originality in the local art milieu. Paper, graphite, red sand, indigo and gum arabic are all part of her aesthetic vocabulary

The ethos of minimal abstraction addressed by a contemporary freedom of approach is the essence of Noor Jehan Bilgrami’s latest collection of artworks. Yet it brings to mind the centuries old art of the Navajo Indian tribes who, on the coloured sands of their North American territories, used thinly sprinkled charcoal, cornmeal, pollen and crushed petals to trace ritual pictograms that were destroyed when their healing or spiritual purpose was fulfilled. Separated by over a thousand years, culture and beliefs, one could still sense the age-old respect for the earth and the power of organic materials, the concern for growth and diminution.

The quiet passion evoked in Noor Jehan’s reassertion of the priority of nature and organic elements brings a distinctly original contribution to the prevailing art milieu. At the same time, the successful textile designer and artist reopens a discussion on the relationship between concepts of art and crafts. In an exhibition titled The Unbleached Mark, held at the Canvas gallery, 32 unframed mixed media works created from simple materials were put together with intuitive spontaneity. Using whatever she finds at hand, the artist incorporates paper, muslin cloth, acrylic paint, graphite, red sand, indigo and gum arabic in her aesthetic vocabulary.

“Art doesn’t have to be about canvas or Windsor & Newton paints, it could be indigo dye. I find to work with dyes is fabulous and the blues they give you range from the palest to the richest shades. My concerns are to do with exploring space and how to work with a bare minimum using materials within my reach.”

Inspiration drawn from the red sand of Sri Lanka, used by the artist to colour cloth, and an indepth experience of Japanese philosophy endow her work with multicultural aspects; elements that enrich the personal odyssey that generates the spirit of the work. Noor Jehan began exhibiting her paintings in 1974, and her work in textiles in 1978. Through the years, she has succeeded in crossing the boundaries of both disciplines in a way uniquely her own. Appropriation has always been an important factor of Noor Jehan’s expression, initially found in paper collage; then, almost two decades ago, during the Orangi township violence, she started assimilating strips of material on to surfaces after witnessing women retrieving bits of cloth from the remains of their homes at Sohrab Goth. Her outrage was articulated in an exhibition she titled “Crying for the Light”, exhibited at the Indus Gallery in 1987.

Widely travelled, Noor Jehan has represented Pakistan at many international conferences and workshops. A fellowship from the Japan Foundation in 2001, offered the opportunity to spend a year at the Tama Art University, Tokyo, as well as travelling throughout Japan in the study of indigo dye.

“It was a great experience meeting farmers, and indigo artists. I absorbed Japanese aesthetics and have since returned to Japan three times. The sensibilities and refinement of the people, their whole way of living touched me immensely and those feelings are still intact. I feel we have lost these qualities with the part of our culture that has virtually disappeared. I met internationally renowned textile artists and there is little talk about the work, no labelling and putting into context with ‘isms’. Not burdening the public with too much information.”

Working with the Japan Folk Craft Museum, Tokyo, as curator of an exhibition of traditional textiles from Pakistan “Tana Bana, The Woven Soul of Pakistan”, “was really quite amazing”. Initially, explanatory labels had been prepared to describe each item but in the interest of letting the viewer enter the work, they were not utilized. “The idea was to let the viewer see,” said Noor Jehan, “The intellectualization that is going on in the world brings a barrier between you and what you are experiencing, which ideally should be intuitive coming from inside out.”

Proving that less is more, Noor Jehan creates subtle textures and shades often held together by the trace of a gridded substructure. The unexpected shine of mica in powdered graphite seen in certain light adds movement to the informal use of the materials. Muslin cloth is torn into stripes and squares, unravelled threads offset by dripped gum arabic or strips of under- painted areas. Gestural lines scratched with a nail on predominantly blue areas echo the movement of waves in the ocean. Lines made with charcoal suggest an involvement of calligraphy, one finds cloth layered in horizontal bands, circles, marks, stains, tiny traces of paint splashed by a brush, the paths left by trickling gum arabic. These are the components of the artist’s hands-on approach to the media.

“In the blue areas one finds the sea, the ocean the fluidity within oneself, the universe. I glued the cloth to the surface and felt like stripping it off at one point and found the gradient impression very interesting. The cloth is part of the mark making connection, the glazing created by gum arabic.” Explaining a tracery of lines found in some of the works, she said, “ Everything in nature has veins, leaves, old walls, landscape and I admire the Japanese concept of accepting things as they naturally are”.

Working without conscious design, the artist found in several of the finished pieces echoes of a childhood in Hyderabad, Deccan. The “square” shapes appearing emerged as Grandmother’s needlework while working on a surface for Parcheesi.

“Hyderabad has red sand and we used to make markings in the sand and play Hopscotch using shells and stones. The memories came back suffused with love and the sense of getting back into myself.”