Mahreen Zuberi is coordinator fine arts at Karachi University and visiting faculty at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture. She is a 2003 NCA graduate with numerous group participations, workshops and residencies, national and international, to her credit. The artist recently exhibited at Canvas, Koel, Poppyseed and Rhotas 2 in Karachi and her work was part of 'Resemble reassemble' at Devi Art Foundation, India and 'Hanging fire' at Asia Society Museum, New York. A miniature major Zuberi airs her views on the genre's odyssey from an exotic art form to a defining, foundational tool of contemporary, ideational art. How do you define yourself—as a contemporary miniature artist or just a contemporary artist?
Understanding “now” and responding to it in a visual language that is from today is how I translate being a contemporary artist.
Though it's interesting how you've suggested a split in a contemporary miniature artist and a contemporary artist, post Shazia Sikander contemporary miniature thrived as a genre. These were exciting times when tradition was being reinterpreted. Boundaries broken, redefined, only to be broken down again. Fun!
'Beyond the Page', curated by Hammad Nasar and Anna Sloan marks what the genre has shaped into today. Miniature painting has moved beyond being a novelty. There is urgency in the expression of the artist; the medium they choose is what best expresses their conceptual concerns.
How do you perceive the status of miniature art today, at home and abroad?
I constantly question myself about how art from Pakistan is perceived and contextualised at home and abroad. Since miniature painting has been tagged ornate and ritualistic, there has been an immense interest in its technique and craftsmanship. What a wasli is, how the paints are prepared, are squirrels killed to make brushes and so on. I've not killed a squirrel for a brush, but I speak only for myself.
In 2003, the year I was going to finish college, I met Virginia Whiles, an art historian visiting NCA, who had for a while been intrigued with and following the developments of the contemporary miniature painting movement. Quoting myself from the interview with her, I had said, “My work is minimal, to avoid getting lost in trash and deco.” Repeating it after seven years, I realise how arrogant it sounds, but I did not want a standing ovation for how detailed and decorative my painting was; I wanted to be applauded for how great my idea was.
Ideally that is how I would want to perceive the status of miniature or any other contemporary art form. Though today how people respond to miniature painting is varied, there are some who are still curious about the technique and others who have latched on to new trends and find miniature so passé. And then there are few, who respond to ideas irrespective of the medium.
Now that the discipline is being taught at Indus Valley and Karachi University do you feel a Karachi chapter is also evolving?
Sumbul Khan, the curator for Poppyseed Gallery was the first to formally point it out. I recently co-curated a show with her and Sumaira Tazeen titled 'The Karachi miniature'. I will admit it was tricky selecting a group of artists for this show since it is difficult to identify what is purely “miniature” or even if there really is a need to make that distinction.
We came to an agreement that besides the technique and medium there was also a sensibility that was attached to miniature painting. That sensibility surpassed the technique and medium itself. For example, we had works by a young Karachi University graduate, Nosheen Iqbal who had constructed tiny sculptural pieces from broken down watch parts. The show reinforces the emergence of a Karachi chapter, on a superficial level maybe. But at the end of the day when we speak in a global context these distinctions are insignificant.
How does your training in miniature painting translate into your current, apparently contemporary, art practice?
I think more than my training as a miniature painter, life and my experiences play a more dominant role in my art practise. Though I am not playing down the importance of its history and its contribution in giving art from Pakistan its very own indigenous brand and putting us out on an international platter, miniature painting is a tool I am most comfortable with so naturally it becomes the first I reach out to. But my art making process usually starts from visualising the final piece and then gearing up with the most appropriate apparatus to build it.
Your current ongoing series centralises on the city of Karachi. You address the psychological impact cities in transition have on its inhabitants. What particular issues are you highlighting... and what kind of vocabulary are you using for it?
Earlier this year, I witnessed a phone-snatching incident at a very busy traffic light here in Karachi. For a Karachiite it should not have had an impact on me since incidents like these and much worse are part of coffee table conversations. I guess witnessing it from a distance and looking at the expressions of the people who were acting as a passive audience, of which I was also a part, had an effect on me.
As a defence mechanism we isolate ourselves from situations that we cannot deal with or have no control over. The Karachi I imagined myself in was not the Karachi I was living in. I started observing extensions of walls that had been erected all over the city whether it was by increasing the height of a former wall or creating an additional super wall made of cargo containers. These sites I was familiar with but I never thought about them. Did these walls actually protect or did they only provide psychological security, in either case they arose out of a sense of insecurity. In the work that followed, I made drawings of the various add-on walls and enclosed them in leather bound 'taweez'. I was attempting to record the landscape of our times and simultaneously provide a 'tor' for it.
The works that are currently showing at Aicon Gallery are from the series called 'Green patrol', part of which I have earlier exhibited at Canvas Gallery in Karachi. The inspiration came from the recently mass planted button mangrove hedges all over the city. The button mangrove originally comes from tropic and sub tropic parts of the western hemisphere. Using these foreign flora walls as metaphor, I talk about an ongoing imposition that the physical and emotional landscape is subjected to. I transform these shrubs into large topiary body builders sprinkled across popular landscapes in Karachi, like Quaid-i- Azam's Mazar, Seaview, Hotel Metropole etc. The Green Patrol imitates a security force; its origin is not indigenous yet it appears to be at home, publicly flexing its muscles. This work is more whimsical; it gives us a chance to inwardly smile at ourselves.
