Aisha Khalid’s appearance
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Aisha Khalid
Aisha Khalid has an easygoing and joyful demeanour. You may be pleasantly surprised by the unadulterated beysaa-khtagi in which she expresses herself if you peruse the works she has produced over the previous thirty years or so.Khalid, a trained miniaturist, joined the National College of Arts (NCA) by chance, taking a path quite different from the one she had envisioned for herself. Khalid discusses the 1980s forced sale of family land in Sindh and subsequent relocation to Lahore in Salima Hashmi’s Unveiling The Visible (2001), a collection of writings by women artists in Pakistan. That event marked a watershed in her development. The artist had originally wanted to be a doctor, but after enrolling in a “second rate women’s college” in Lahore, she had to settle with whatever was available.
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miniature painting
Khalid was an academically driven student at NCA, and the discipline required to create a miniature painting is apparent to anybody who has even looked at one.In her early works, Aisha Khalid drew inspiration from her own life, with the geometric design of her family’s Sindh home frequently appearing in her compositions. Miniature paintings frequently feature recurring motifs, each of which must be meticulously recreated. Miniaturists are often thought of as stereotypically reserved people. However, you’re just generalising. Khalid’s forthright and sincere communication, along with the description of her practise, gives the impression that she has found and is living her true calling.Several years ago, when Khalid needed a curator in Karachi, he was put in touch with Masuma Halai Khwaja through a mutual acquaintance.
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museums in Pakistan
She explains, “There aren’t many museums in Pakistan, and I feel more and more the urge to exhibit my work to a Pakistani audience, especially in Karachi. I was born and raised in Sindh and maintain strong ties to the region.My formative experiences have informed much of my training. It has its origins in the floor tiles of my house in rural Sindh, and its patterns are inspired by those tiles’ geometric shapes. I picked up embroidery skills then and continue to incorporate them into my work today. My writing is heavily influenced by that region, that era, and my own history.Khalid quickly uncovered the financial means and historical venues necessary to exhibit her work in Karachi, and she began searching for a curator.I have acquaintances in Karachi but no real bonds with them.
4.sewing and embroidery
Thus, the inaugural edition of I Am And I Am Not came to be, and artist and curator Masuma Halai Khwaja considers it to be significant, but perhaps not in the ways one might expect. It’s intriguing to see what two artists with a similar approach can create when they work together, and Halai Khwaja’s use of the ‘domestic’ arts of sewing and embroidery in her own practise only adds to the anticipation.Halai Khwaja is unconcerned with such particulars. They are a side note. Everything Aisha Khalid writes is seen by her as a means to an end. They were consequently overjoyed when Zara Stanhope, Director of New Zealand’s Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, offered to host the retrospective exhibition.Seeing New Zealand “off the grid” was intriguing
5.Burda Sharif
Aisha’s writing provides a gentle introduction to Islam for a population that is otherwise unfamiliar with the religion.The Garden of Love Is Green Without Limit is a piece that Aisha created for the Burda Sharif; it’s a soft introduction to who we are as a people and a nation, and it has the potential to offer the Pakistani population in New Zealand a voice. They’ll feel more welcome and comfortable here once they see themselves reflected in the artwork, and they’ll be more likely to return.Locating works that are currently in private collections was a significant part of putting together the retrospective.According to Halai Khwaja,
6.Zara Stanhope
we had to borrow those works to show how Aisha’s thought process has travelled, and how it began from personal things, personal concerns, focusing on the cultural, moving onto socio- political commentary after 9/11, and then organically dedicating itself to spiritual exploration.”The goals that Zara Stanhope had for the exhibition dovetailed nicely with those that Aisha Khalid and Masuma Halai Khwaja had for this body of work.For Stanhope, “expanding the possible” is central to the gallery’s mission. “Therefore, it truly means broadening people’s beliefs and worldviews, and not just focusing narrowly on an academic, extremely didactic idea of creativity or art, but on all the different things that art can do to teach you about people in the world and what the world is without actually stating it. https://tebift.com/aisha-khalids-appearance/
