LAHORE: An exhibition of paintings and installations by Nazia Ejaz, the daughter of Melody Queen Noor Jehan, opened at Rohats 2 Art Gallery on Saturday.

Three paintings and as many installations were on display, the exhibition was the first solo of the artist in Lahore. In the past, she has also held solo exhibitions in Karachi and Islamabad besides Australia.

The themes of the artworks revolved around cultural heritage and cross cultural everyday life experiences.

Ms Nazia told Dawn that she belonged to Lahore; however, she had been living in Australia for the last 11 years.

“My work has deep association with Lahore and its heritage and Indo–Islamic architecture”.

When asked whether her mother, Noor Jehan, encouraged her when it came to studying fine arts, she said her mother was a source of inspiration for her who encouraged her in studying visual arts.

The artist graduated from the National College of Arts in the 1990s and later went to London for hers Masters in Visual Art from the Slade School of Art. She received a scholarship to study the Indian Art History with the School of Oriental and African Studies and Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London, and worked as a print maker and teacher in the UK and Pakistan.

Salima Hashmi, Nazia Ejaz’s teacher and owner of Rohtas 2 Art Gallery, said Nazia was her student at the NCA and when she wanted to study in London Noor Jehan was reluctant to send her there but Nazia did more than the expectations of her mother. “Her work moves from being a printmaker to now into a third dimension,” said Ms Hashmi.

Nazia Ejaz, in her statement, said: “I draw inspiration from my cultural heritage and cross-cultural everyday life experiences. My work examines the correlation between reality and perception. It investigates the politics of representation of the self and the other, where one who narrates and represents from a privileged position often directs the gaze. In my practice, I am particularly interested in how social perceptions and interactions are often mediated experiences. I use the concept and physicality of screens as metaphors for points of separation within a space.”

She said Jaali screens were a common feature of Indo-Islamic architecture and they were used for separation and demarcating a space to form boundaries, to shroud and reveal, depending on the perspective of the viewer. “The interconnected and symmetrical structure of the screen creates awareness of a space beyond the gaze but obstructs it at the same time. It manages the gaze, both outside (of the screens) and inside (the space).”

Ms Ejaz said that through her work, she had explored the question of looking within and at others, from an alternative frame of reference to the one that existed in our cultural landscape of binaries and the politics of participation and exclusion. Although the subject matter of the works was personal, she hoped it addressed universal concerns, as well.

“I find that there is a social tendency to distance oneself from that which is different. However, the manner in which one responds to the ‘other’ whether it is with compassion, apathy or disdain, defines the individual. My work attempts to explore these points of separation to establish an alternate mode of seeing, looking and representing”.

The exhibition will remain open until Dec 12.

Published in Dawn, November 29th, 2015