She has been in the habit of thinking only in terms of images, forms and cartoons since her childhood. Whenever she wanted show any reaction to her family, the only mode of expression for Bibi Hajra Cheema was cartoons.

A visual artist of her own style, Ms Cheema is one of rare few who employ cartoons and caricatures to develop striking visuals to address social, economic and political chaos we are living in.

Drawing is her way of thinking; it is a continuous phenomenon she has been living with.

“To draw, I didn’t need studying art,” she recalls.

“But, during graduation from the National College of Arts in the discipline of Architecture, I developed reading habits.

“It opened up my mind and helped me groom as an artist and a political activist,” she believes.

She never practised architecture except for designing a house for her parents.

What changed her way of looking at her social landscape are Erasmus Mundas Scholarship to study abroad and her Masters in Urban Studies.

“Though I love Lahore, going abroad was an escape from my surroundings. I studied social sciences in Brussels, Vienna, Copenhagen and Madrid. I studied these cities that gave me a way to look at things critically,” she shares her academic details.

She looks at class difference critically.

“I think it’s a dilemma of the middle class and upper middle class that we derive our opinions from the people around us. To detach ourselves from them and look at our own families, class and culture is a shocking experience.”

Initially, she tried to paint in conventional mediums but felt technical problems.

“Physical behaviour of people and the architectural spaces are my focus. I only need a piece of paper and a pencil to express what I feel; I don’t have much patience to develop the visual slowly. I feel a sort of nausea if I don’t express immediately what I have conceived. I make quick sketches on-the-spot and later on compose them on big panels and render them sometimes with colours,” she explains.

For the last one year or so, she has been working with ‘Feminist Collective’, a group of energetic young activists.

“Being the only female child in my family, I’ve been facing so many things since my childhood, but I don’t have that collective energy before meeting this group,” she admits.

She is making feminist art and creating small posters addressing religious intolerance in society.

“It’s good to see cheering crowds on roads, celebrating the cricket victory or people swimming and enjoying in the canal, but the absence of females at the public places always disturbs me.

“I made a few works depicting these scenes of joy, by replacing the male crowd with females,” she smiles.

Ms Cheema works with a wide range of subjects such as scenes of parties and weddings of alienated upper middle class, a crowded gynaecology ward of a hospital, a guard on duty for long hours, labourers working in dangerous environment and multinational companies commercialising and exploiting the cultural icons of society.

She works with a private university to make her living. Ms Cheema is gifted with a keen eye to observe everything around her, in sharp details. Her works seems like evolving from caricatures to the expressionist way of dealing with lines. Passionate about her city and people, she makes blunt and loud visual statements, employing the lines which are strong, dynamic and agitating.

Published in Dawn, July 3rd, 2017