ISLAMABAD: A solo exhibition by senior artist Mobina Zuberi opened at Gallery6 on Thursday.
Titled ‘Textures of Emotions’, the show features 27 recent and selected works that move between heavily textured geometric abstraction and stylised figurative painting.
The works share a distinctive visual language and show a strong continuity in Zuberi’s artistic thinking. Whether she uses the human figure or explores colour and form, her main concern is evoking emotional experience.
Curator Arjumand Faisel said: “Mobina Zuberi’s artistic journey spans several decades, evolving through a wide range of subjects and approaches.”
He goes on to say that “her figurative paintings depict women who reject conventional ideals of feminine beauty, inhabiting ordinary yet psychologically charged moments.”
Zuberi suggests rather than describes. She uses economical lines, simplified contours, elongated forms and almond eyes. A tilted head or a downward glance carries the emotional weight. Her palette is elemental: warm ochres and burnt sienna against deep indigo and charcoal, with reds that smoulder and blacks that sit dense and quiet.
The abstract and cosmic pieces employ a different vocabulary yet remain equally concerned with atmosphere.
Evoking ancient archaeology and celestial mapping, these works orchestrate shape, colour, and texture without human presence.
The tactile quality of Nepalese handmade paper is integral, its rugged surface interacting with colour to give paintings a material presence almost sensed through the eyes. Heavy impasto creates surfaces resembling weathered stone or ancient parchment, with canvas edges intentionally left raw and ragged.
Zuberi’s women appear consistently introspective.
Some curl inward or are enveloped in voluminous shapes, suggesting vulnerability. In one canvas, two women in red tops sit within a boat-like bowl, veiled in translucent white, an image both intimate and isolated, suspended between memory and dream.
Recurring motifs of celestial bodies and structural frameworks evoke alchemical diagrams or cosmic maps. Whether depicting glowing spheres or introspective figures, the viewer is left with feelings of timelessness, solitude, and spiritual contemplation.
The exhibition confirms Mobina Zuberi as a painter of subtle depth whose work rewards slow, attentive looking exploring not simply what we see, but what we feel when we encounter an image.
Published in Dawn, October 4th, 2026
