All genres and forms of art, since the beginning of human history, have remained incomplete without the indulgence of women as the subject matter. The female figure and image, owing to aesthetically-alluring appearance and the predilection of the male artists, has been reincarnated into many characters but not as a human being. She was transcendental as a goddess or deity in mythologies and survived through royal histories as a beautiful queen, a gorgeous princess, a stunning courtesan and an enticing mistress of the known masculine cultures and civilisations across the world.

Even the modern or contemporary trends in arts, literature and music need complete or partial use of the body, character and image of the woman. Sumera Jawad is a painter whose work revolves around the image of women through history. However, her recent exhibition “Insinuations” at the Artscene Galleries in Karachi, presented another phase of her work: the psychological quest and social pursuit of women to endure without any emotional compromise.

Over a span of a decade, Jawad’s style of painting has evolved to shape itself naturally without losing the woman’s image as her main forte. She prefers to paint what she feels rather than what she needs to express through her images. This process of image-making has come a long way after going through cultures, mythologies, religions and psychological hallucinations of diverse geological times and lands. However, at the same time, she has engaged in her work modern patterns of liberalism and feminism with a love for experimentalism. The silhouetted figures that breathed in almost all of her previous frames have now attained a defined contour; transforming from unintentional imagination to purposeful fortitude on the canvas.

Sumera Jawad’s newest paintings have substituted strong, everyday women for deities

If one looks upon the female characters of the figurative paintings, it is quite evident that these figures have evolved with the painter’s skills. Sumera Jawad, as a woman, intentionally contextualises intangible thoughts, feelings and emotions of her gender.

In the earlier phases of her work, the artist narrated the unspoken and unaccepted patterns of the collective psyche of society through deities, goddesses and other eminent women of history. However, now her brush is confident enough to represent a contemporary common woman who is neither a goddess nor a historically acclaimed character, and who does not possess any venomous or supernatural powers of the mythological nature.

These women, on the canvas, appear strong enough to exist and survive through the present time against all odds with more human qualities and natural potential, but with a deeper level of self-belief and dignity.

In recent years, Jawad has started composing her figures in simplistic, sometimes even flat spaces. This practice offers more significance to her characters and adds a feeling of self-realisation to them. At times, she also complements her women with a rose; indicating the paradoxical possibilities of passion and purity. The meanings of her canvases become animated with simple compositions, roses and feminine characters which, somehow negates the dull, defused and indifferently present male figures around or nearby, in an approach that appears close to female chauvinism.

In her previous works, the artist had indulged in self-portrait as an essential part of her characters. She lived through her canvases while surviving shoulder-to-shoulder with her deities and heroines whom she has been an admirer of. However, in her latest works, she is not present in these canvases alongside the images of the barren-eyed females.

The exhibition was held at the Artscene Galleries Karachi from November 26 to December 01, 2016.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, January 8th, 2017