Talha Rathore is an internationally acclaimed contemporary miniaturist with numerous prestigious events and exhibitions to her credit. A review of a series that combined New York subway system maps patched together and used as a surface for delicate organic elements, created considerable interest when shown at the Aicon Gallery, New York. Swapna Vora reviewing the work stated it as, “specifically Asian and yet universal”.

Although—since Rathore is based in New York—one has not had the opportunity to view the artist’s oeuvre for some time in Karachi, in her current exhibition at the Chawkandi Art, Karachi, one finds the exquisite pattern of natural elements retain their magic transformed with alchemic skill. The scale of the work, manipulation of the surface and delicate tonalities of hues reflect the order of natural objects in a state of transience.

A series of three artworks, ‘Celebration of life’ is composed of minute marks creating leaves and seeds that flow across surfaces as if tossed by gentle breezes and creating an ambience of expectation, of movement and fecundity. Touches of red colour in flower petals echo the colour of the fine borders enclosing the images and crediting the artist’s early art training in traditional miniature painting at the NCA, Lahore.

Rathore includes in exhibition a series of ideas that constitute an extension of an enchanting earlier series. In these paintings the playthings of childhood, paper boats were painted upon a blue surface suggesting water composed of the finest cross hatched lines. Rathore titles the series ‘My heart too will find its shore’.

“When the paper boats are left in the water and your eyes keep track of what happens next naturally, in that very moment, your hopes and uncertainties linger on. Sometimes being a citizen of two countries I find myself in that situation.”

Rathore and her husband, the artist Fasihullah Ahsan, graduated from the NCA in 1994 and then joined the faculty of the college. The artists combined their work in an exhibition held in Lahore in ’96. In 1997, Rathore was awarded a Unesco bursary and subsequently spent two months at the Sanskrit Academe, in Delhi, India. There, in those peaceful, meditative surroundings, she began to evolve a contemporary personal idiom.

In 1998, the young couple settled in New York, where today they live with their son.

Rathore, whose work has been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world, retains her links with confreres and mentors in Pakistan. In a statement that describes the work in exhibition at Chawkandi Art one reads: “My work evolves mainly from the organic forms. These forms in the shape of trees, plants, flowers, seeds and sometimes bacteria and viruses represent life, growth and change”.

The series of 32 miniature paintings from a series, ‘Sowing seeds’, constitute warm, human statements full of life and colours that bring a renewal of optimistic narrative to jaded spirits. The artist offers the series as an effort to draw the viewer’s attention towards “how important and beautiful life is. Even the smallest and tiniest form like bacteria carries the life of all the heavens.”

The artist examines and integrates quintessential forms and objects with their reoccurrence in the order of nature and in a state of metamorphosis that binds art with nature.