Ayesha Quraishi’s latest body of work was recently on display at the Koel Gallery, Karachi, where her abstract paintings, prints and sculptural pieces came together as a kind of mental portrait of the artist. Devoid of any direct representation, the works are rather felt on a deep sensory level in order to be fully understood, as the artist goes beyond the obvious to bring into open presence unseen vocabularies.

Quraishi has an interesting process behind her work, working tirelessly for hours at a stretch on one piece, playing with form and erasure of form to reach a state of compromise between the two. Her practice is an intimate and meditative exploration of the medium’s interaction with the surface. Mark-making is achieved with one hand and simultaneously removed with the other creating layered textures and rich color.

The work is then in a kind of purgatory state, existing in a transitional space between being formed and formless. Quraishi says in her artist statement, “Open presence is an acknowledgment of the space of consciousness, an intermediate space between senses and states. A place one may come to observation without preferences. A holding place between the ordinary and sublime at once.”

The resulting body of work is thus very personal and reads as an exploration of the artists own cerebral space. When writing about her work she talks of vocabularies, referring not to the spoken word but to the ways in which elusive concepts are articulated, such as breath/air, weight or bones. The abstract nature of these works, however, makes them open to countless interpretations. They do not impose any worldview upon the audience but rather evoke emotive responses. By removing representational forms from the works, they are no longer tied to the artist but may represent anyone or anything.

Ayesha Quraishi plays with form and erasure of form to reach a state of compromise between the two

The accompanying texts, which seem like snippets lifted out of a poem, act as rather lengthy titles for the pieces. They light a spark of thought that may lead each individual on a different tangent, helping decipher the artworks in their own way. Like the work itself these are not very specific but rather vague suggestions to nudge us along. It almost seems as though an entire poem was broken down, each phrase given physical form in its accompanying artwork.

An example is the piece ‘A Word of Love in the Shape of Burning Awareness, I Offer’ where you are forced to draw connections between the hints of bright yellow and orange and the “burning awareness” mentioned in the phrase. With this phrase in mind, the dark lines and black areas spell confusion, almost like a forest at night time, the sepia plain like a welcoming campsite offering shelter and the “burning” yellow a campfire providing warmth, light and hope, much like love does. The beauty of it is in the fact that this may not even be what the artist intended to say, and it may be read in a completely different way by another viewer.

Keeping the abstract nature of the work in mind I do not feel it is presumptuous to see dreary landscapes in some of the pieces and architectural spaces in others. This illusion of space is actually quite fitting as what we see is the artist’s internal space where lines, color and textures come together to create nothing specific yet something fundamentally significant. This is where presence and absence are married into a harmonic union to give birth to a serene chaos. There is no absolute tangible form here, even with the sculptural pieces which seem to be on the precipice of being, in a transient state between form and formless.

The illusion of space in the artwork is actually quite fitting as what we see is the artist’s internal space where lines, color and textures come together to create nothing specific yet something fundamentally significant. This is where presence and absence are married into a harmonic union to give birth to a serene chaos.

What is interesting about the exhibit is the way the works are displayed, moving from subdued and sombre spaces with only limited areas of color, to large scale timber with rich and muddled color and texture, to sepia-veiled bursts of color and then finally to complete black and white pseudo landscapes. We see variations in the ways the artist chooses to express herself. As subliminal emotions come to the surface, there is a progression in the way they are expressed.

One cannot help but realize that in attempts to help us take out our own meanings from her work, Quraishi treats her work with an opaqueness. The audience may embark on a journey of awareness, but may not discover any groundbreaking insights into the artist’s psyche, even though the work feels very personal. Perhaps the idea here is not to show us who she is but to bring her presence into the work through the process of art-making. Through the act of creating she is able to find and define herself, and send us on our journey of awareness inwards.

‘Open Presence’ was on display at the Koel Gallery from September 1st till September 17th

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine September 25th, 2016