Maps of Skin and Spirit is a two-person show that recently took place at the Canvas Gallery featuring works by Dua Abbas Rizvi and Wardah Shabbir. Aptly named, the works in this show are deeply personal and reflective, with a heavy use of symbolism and allegories wrapped in layers of profoundness. While the artists’ personal experiences and beliefs help drive the narrative, the work still manages to assign itself to larger themes of feminism, semblance of home, extremism and spirituality in the context of an increasingly regressive and restrictive society.

Rizvi’s portraits stem from photographs taken during the artist’s travels as well as those borrowed from family photo albums. These have been translated into an exploration of the idea of home and a search for meaning. The works evoke the phrase “a woman’s place is in the home” and all the attached social pressures articulated through a level of emotional complexity. Each series in this body of work explores a different aspect of this idea.

In the “Displaced Hearts” series the artist depicts women from different backgrounds that she has encountered in various places. The treatment of these portraits betrays a certain affinity to these characters, with a kind of endearment in the way she has crafted their environments. These nomadic souls are untethered and free to roam, explore, discover and experience, growing as they search for home.

In contrast, the characters in the “Windowless Rooms” series are confined within enclosed walls with no room to breathe or hope. They appear to lack the vitality, warmth, and individualism of the former women, seeming more withdrawn and subdued, with blank faces and cold stares. As these women remain bound to the home, there seems to be a yearning for something beyond.

Artists use personal experiences in an exhibition to explore broader themes of feminism, spirituality and freedom of choice within a conservative society

The culminating works ‘She Had a Certain … Ruin Lust’ and the diptych ‘(Her Lot) The Hearth’ and ‘(His) The Earth’ draw from the story of Lot’s wife who was turned into a pillar of salt as punishment for a mere glance back at her home in the process of destruction. While sympathising with this unnamed character, the work raises questions about a woman’s attachment to the home and the fear of losing it forever. Considering the enormity of the situation, she paid a high price for disobedience, which underscores the importance of personal agency. It is the right to choose the trajectory of their own lives that most women in our society are robbed of, losing their own worth in the process.

Shabbir’s work, while devoid of human presence and dealing with matters of spirituality, presents another kind of search. Drawing on the concept of the Islamic garden, Shabbir uses abundant foliage intricately rendered in the classic miniaturist style to represent her search for the right path or ‘Siraat.’ The symbolism of the vegetation serves to both personalise and generalise her visuals, with each element signifying certain experiences, yet coming together to represent a paradisiacal space of peace and nourishment of the soul.

There seems to be a negotiation between the rigid geometry of Islamic patterns with straight lines and shapes and the somewhat organic geometry of nature which helps form them. In a way, it brings to life the artist’s own views about spirituality and religion and the idea of free will within a predestined world. This idea is also reflected in the way she chooses to display her works, with the leaves, birds and bees flowing out on to the walls, breaking the rules and spreading with no rhyme or reason, flying beyond the frame against their instincts to follow a pattern.

What emerges out of both these artists’ search for self is an emphasis on the concept of choice, Rizvi coming from a feminist perspective, while Shabbir providing a spiritual argument for it. From the idea of being reduced to an afterthought for the sin of disobeying, to the need to choose between right and wrong and pave our own paths to the self and the Divine, breaking out of a preset pattern is the key to a meaningful life.

“Maps of Skin and Spirit” was on display at the Canvas Gallery in Karachi from August 29 till September 9, 2017.

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 1st, 2017