Mounting a solo after an absence of several years artist Sabah Hussain, presently director Lahore Arts Foundation Trust, and adjunct faculty, department of fine arts, MA (Hons) programme at National College of Arts (NCA), exhibited her recent work at Chawkandi Art, Karachi.

A 1982 graduate of the NCA, Hussain proceeded to Japan in 1984 to conduct research and study printmaking at Kyoto Technical University of Art and Design. Later joining Kyoto University of Fine Arts and Music, she completed a three-year master’s programme in graphic arts. Her major was printmaking. A residency in 1995 at the Victoria and Albert Museum was followed by a Japan Foundation Scholarship for a residency at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music (2004-2005). Familiar with a wide array of conventional printmaking practices she draws inspiration from her deep interest in music, literature, craft and mystical poetry. Here, she answers questions elucidating her work processes and influences.

How would you define your work ethos?

I am interested in language as a tool of interrogation; language is as fluid as image. I use layering as my medium in painting, paperwork and woodcut, sometimes with the text. With every addition, the perception alters physically and conceptually. Issues of aesthetics for me have always remained in a flux from crafts to art, regional to international and artist to artisan. I experimented extensively with the medium, producing paper installations and exhibiting them in Pakistan in 1989 and in Japan in the ’90s. I visited papermaking facilities in Jaipur, Lucknow and Pondicherry in India. And my last adventure with paper was to study paper restoration and conservation when I enrolled for a course at Camberwell College of Arts, UK in 1994.

I have worked at length with music and poetry as my theme. The paper installations based on Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s Urdu poetry are in the collection of Bradford Museum UK, and Okinawa Museum, Japan. My most recent works are based on Maulana Rumi and Noon Meem Rashid’s poetry. I take the concepts as point of departure, and my vocabulary is often abstract.

Well-versed in traditional printmaking practices, you have now opted to express through the digital print media. Can you comment on this shift in art practice and medium?

I have practiced printmaking for many years now. But alongside I have always experimented with papermaking and painting. I have wanted to work with photography, and use it to create images of my installations. My approach is to integrate digital process with other procedures, using the various computer programmes as an additional tool. I think that playing with technology creatively is important. Certainly the tactile processes are closer to the impulses and ideas.

But I have been trying to combine the traditional and the digital techniques to add another layer and a different dimension to my work. I create a space, and place objects in it, which are made from my paintings and prints. I take photographs, and then use the computer to weave a story (in these new works the stories are inspired by Rashid's two poems on Hassan Koozagar). I, then again, paint and draw on the image. I want to use this method to make large installations in the future. I think that digital technology can act as a spring board for developing new ideas. Today as I move between cultures, experimenting, and exploring concepts, I see myself as a cultural anthropologist, exploring and mapping particular areas of interest and concern.

The nuanced abstractions of your earlier prints had a greater rhythmic integration and emotive expression than your current works which appear to be contrived and impersonal. The juxtaposition of images and emphasis on pattern seems to create a forced harmony. Is this a deliberate change of course? If so, why?

If you look at these images, you will see that they are very tactile. I am trying to form a language of symbols which will allow me to move back and forth in time. If I choose to work with poetry, music, or explore other themes, I can use these symbols in different contexts. The paper boat symbolises a journey from a point to another physical and / or spiritual, also a journey of a creative spirit, which is not always pleasant.

It has the dark side as well, the artist can be here or it can be Hassan in Baghdad. The shape of the ‘sadry’ (jacket) is also used because it is worn in the subcontinent and also in the Middle East and Mediterranean regions. I have travelled to quite a few places, and after going through my photographs and doing some research I decided to choose this form. The paper is all handmade, and these are mixed media works. They are not prints. After this exhibition I will be showing in Islamabad and Lahore.