As soon as we enter the Sadequain Gallery for the ‘Zenana Mardana’ show, Meher Afroz’s Purdah greets us.

This installation by the famous artist, in golden acrylic on transparent paper panels, and a masnad — floor piece in velvet — speaks about her cultural background of Lucknow, which has a rich synergy of painting, printmaking and poetry that have always been embedded in her works. They mark her extraordinary but pensive artistic journey of over 50 years. According to Afroz, the purdah should not be taken in the literal sense of a veil, but is the space and consideration that exists between opposite genders in any relationship.

The opening of the show at the majestic Frere Hall is the 10-year celebration of Phenomena, a leading event-design company headed by Pomme Amina Afzal. It also coincided with the 35th death anniversary of the great Sadequain, who died on 10 February 1987. The curator’s decision to hold the show ‘A Tribute to the Master Artists’ — Sadequain, Gulgee and Jamil Naqsh, with 12 other well-known artists — under Sadequain’s canopy of Arz o Samawaat is quite phenomenal, to say the least.

A few artists, such as Nahid Raza, who is also a part of the show, have long been addressing familial structures. There is a single oil painting, ‘Cloud’, by her, which shows a couple under a fluffy white cloud, with a fish holding out a rose to the sarree-clad, bindi-donning woman and the man behind her. As we know, the fish symbol has universally been used to represent fertility, good luck and harmony. In the artist’s own words, “the man is like a cloud for a woman, showering her with affection and protection.”

R.M. Naeem’s large and realistic Meri Marzi diptych, in acrylics on canvas, is very telling. A master of his craft, he portrays two familiar faces; a woman model in a man’s clothes, and a male visual artist wearing a woman’s clothes, including a dupatta draped over his head. Both have halos drawn above them. This striking diptych is provocative, and the title is expressly indicative, telling people to back off, and to stop being judgmental about the personal choices of individuals.

A show exploring the masculine and feminine provided an opportunity to revisit the works of the three greats — Sadequain, Gulgee and Jamil Naqsh — along with 12 other prominent artists

Abdul Jabbar Gul’s sculpture in wood and brass, in his familiar idiom, is titled Ordinary Souls, which represent the masculine and feminine side of each person — the yin and yang inside us. This interdependence of yin-yang is demonstrated by the symbol’s curved line, and the addition of a black and white dot indicates the potential for inner transformation. 

According to Gul, “In the spiritual realm, there is no Zenana Mardana.” He has also included two large figurative compositions on canvas. The simple and sober men and women in his paintings are the ordinary souls with whom the artist has an affinity, as he counts himself as one of them.

Affan Baghpati’s Hunt by the Cloud blurs the gender lines with a small-sized assemblage of found objects, vinyl, synthetic hair, glass beads etc., depicting the half-woman half-animal attraction of the Karachi Zoo, with which we are all too familiar. She is a man impersonating as the infamous Mumtaz Begum attraction for the masses.

Affan’s practice of working with objects of material culture, mainly from South Asia, and sculpting around these, has a tremendous appeal. For this show, instead of the Zoo’s original fox-woman, he has created a reclining tiger-striped lady, who rests on a piece of carpet in a glass box.

The two large luminous oils-on-canvas using synthetic polymer paint and gold leaf are titled Ishq by painter and print-maker Nazia Ejaz. The horizontally placed canvases, one on top of the other, has the word Ishq written with black in a repetitive, interwoven, and meditative manner on the one at the bottom, with a tinge of pale blue across the canvas.

However, the top canvas, cleverly turned upside down, has recognisable but unreadable, abstract script. It looks like it also repeatedly has the same word written on it and, instead of the blue, there’s zigzagging orange paint across it. The artist has quoted the chivalrous Arthurian legendary knight, Sir Gawain, known for representing the five virtues of friendship, generosity, chastity, courtesy and piety. She quotes: “The union of feminine and masculine energies within the individual is the basis of all creation.”

Renowned artist Amin Gulgee, who gives life to metal, depicts the endless energy of the city of Karachi with his display of a 20 feet tall metal sculpture of leaves: Impossible Growth. He says that, “It is a liminal space where opposites coexist in tight tension.” Later in the evening, there was a performance work by him and Nazia Ejaz, titled Irritable Heart.

The other artists chosen for this exhibition were Imran Qureshi, Jimmy Engineer, Sayeda Habib. Xandria Noir and Sanki King.

‘Zenana Mardana’ was exhibited at the Sadequain Gallery in Frere Hall, Karachi, from February 10-24, 2022

Published in Dawn, EOS, March 6th, 2022