Daily Times

Interestingly, Lahore’s ‘O Art Space’ gallery turns out to be a modern version of Salon d’Automne that was established in 1903 to encourage experimental artists and provided a platform for avant-garde. With the oh-so-literary title, “Baby you’re a Metaphor”, Rabia Farooqui gets a chance to display her solo work in the palatial gallery, O Art Space, on September 28. Through her seasoned work, Rabia Farooqui contributes a series of metaphorical composition in the field of Pakistani Contemporary Miniature Art.

Farooqui is currently a Karachi-based visual artist. She received her BFA from the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi in 2015. Rabia majored in Miniature Painting and has taken part in numerous exhibitions nationally and internationally as well.

Farooqui’s work provides an apt pictorial description of the word ’metaphor’ and displays a transition from an image to a symbol. With the ‘Modernized and Modified’ style of gouache miniature painting, Rabia succeeds in providing her viewers with a food for thought by portraying a visual depiction of the figurative word, metaphor. The hanging wooden frames not only possess faceless human figures within but seize a world where mere glance can never make sense unless you dive into the deep sea (of paintings).

Farooqui’s work provides an apt pictorial description of the word ’metaphor’ and displays a transition from an image to a symbol

The paintings altogether unite dissimilar images, creating artistic expressiveness and weaves a tapestry of extensive meaning which is further extended by the perception of myriad viewers. Each painting serves to be a prose, telling story one of its kind; questioning the conventional and stereotypical set notions through cultural representation of various satirical imagery like, black and white chequered pants and flags, roosters and hen, clothes hanging on rope, circus hula hoop etc.

The quirky trait of Rabia Farooqui’s artwork, which keeps me awestruck, is the dim pattern of block prints done at the background of her paintings; displaying the sense of cultural and regional ownership. The motif of moving arms with half visibility in each painting suggests the presence of third person who tries to control the movement of other characters hence depicts our harsh societal realities in an euphemistic way. Rabia Farooqui, creates a contrast, by using flamboyant color palette that balances the depressive tone of the paintings.

The sulky ambiance of the elevator at the gallery, was illuminated the moment I stepped into the Exhibition Room, where the title, ‘Baby, You’re a Metaphor’, was the first to welcome me at the entrance. I thoroughly enjoyed being surrounded by Farooqui’s work; as each served to be a gateway to an unfathomable world. One gets so engrossed in the paintings that one hardly feels distracted by the cluttering and whispering of people around. The empty space among images (on paintings) further accentuates the figures who then stand out as a luminous light on a dark night and brightens the viewer’s cavern of mind.

Farooqui succeeds in reintroducing the age-old medium through a re-interpretation, re-elaboration and revival in the subject and technique of the art form.

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”

? Thomas Merton , No Man Is an Island

Such is the effect of Farooqui’s work, seeing which one shifts from being lost to being found. It’s like a labyrinth where one strolls effortlessly in search of meaning. Another distinctive trait of Farooqui is that she creates contrast in her paintings. Like the painting, with an empty cage on the head of a human and bird outside, creates a contrast of freedom & slavery that challenges the stereotypical mindset of humans as free and birds as slaves.

If you’re aesthetically undaunted enough to find your way through the eye-catching maze then this exhibition is surely the place; as gallery remains open till October 8th, 2018.

Published in Daily Times, September 7^th 2018.