Most contemporary artists today indulge in scale, media and dimensional swings with considerable ease and artist Aisha Khalid’s journey from miniature to mega paintings has now progressed to mammoth installations. Her current exhibition, ‘Larger than life’, at Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, UK, goes beyond concept and ideas to index her shifts from micro to macro and from two to three dimensional works.

The artist’s initial miniature footing based on vibrant tile patterns, floral motifs and the veiled female form eventually matured into minutely rendered but intensely repetitive geometric pattern on huge formats. This move from decorative surfaces and metaphorical commentary on women’s issues to an overpowering emphasis on chromatic restraint and symmetrical design defined her growing reflective posture. Her near recent exhibition of oversized works, also called ‘Larger than life’, explored geometric pattern as a meditative space.

However, in the current show at Whitworth again titled, ‘Larger than life’ there is wider latitude probing multiple perspectives. Comprising installations and a new body of paintings that explore the artist’s experiences of life and spirituality, the collection is layered with subtexts that allude to the personal, cultural and political understandings prevalent in the world today.

Size does matter and the anchor piece of the show, a large site-specific wall installation measuring 21 x 28 feet justifies the title. It creates impact on a physical and conceptual level. Divided into two parts, art on the wall and a video projection on the floor (with sound) in front of the wall, the works examine the relationship between hand and machine embroidery.

When the curator asked Khalid to do site-specific work in the Whitworth Gallery space, she says, “The first thing that came to my mind was that Manchester and Faisalabad (where I was born) are both textile cities. Another related thought was about the plight of the hand weavers when Britain introduced their power looms in the subcontinent.” By reflecting on the extinction of craft communities and domination of industrial mass produced goods this work explores the question of empowerment on a broader scale.

Technically Khalid has ‘embroidered’ the bricks and mortar of one of the Gallery’s double height walls with a repeating pattern of roses. Among the 65 odd roses some are complete while others have needles and thread attached to them to suggest work is in progress. The video projection is a close shot of a machine embroidering the same rose (hand embroidered on the wall). Khalid has only shown the detail of the rose and the needle of the machine (which is making this rose).

She says, “This rose is very linear and it looks like it is making a map on some point — dividing things through red, you can't see the thread because of the machine, it appears as if something red is flowing and making an image. Then there is the sound of the embroidery machine as well, so when you see this whole installation you also listen to the sound of the machine and it seems that because of the machine the hand work has stopped.”

The premise of this piece is that hand embroidery is a creative act of producing an exclusive and priceless item whereas the video on the floor suggests mechanisation where bulk production is cheap and easily accessible with no individual value. It can also mean that something is condemned and deliberately kept on the floor where people can walk on it. While the apparent explanations are too direct and tame it is the oblique inference of a rose transfigured as a map with a hidden hand ‘dividing things through red’ where the artist scores a point.

‘Comforter’ 2008 is yet another textile piece through which she takes a stab at one’s comfort level. Originally shown at her retrospective show at Pump House Gallery, London in 2008, it comprises two red velvet comforters sporting large gold plated needles (the kind with which we sew comforters/quilts).

Strategically inserted to replace the usual stitchery in the comforters the needles are prominently visible as piercing gold spikes. In one comforter you see the sharp side of the needle and in the other only the middle part of the needle is visible. Gleaming attractive and distinctly menacing, the needles succeed in appearing as agents of pain and discomfiture.

When queried about the rigours of working on a mega wall, Khalid remarks, “The most challenging thing in this work was scale, but as you know I am very involved in geometry and pattern in my studio practice. By dividing space into the grid (which I always do even on my smaller paintings) you can deal with any size and scale, it doesn't matter how big it is, and this I have learned from miniature painting. So for me there is no fear of scale now. However, it was not easy to climb the 21-foot high scaffolding many times during the day.”