Currently living and working between Islamabad and Boston, artist Hamra Abbas is amongst the top tier young generation artists experimenting with assorted genres, strategies and subject matter. Riding high on the twin attributes of a refreshingly fertile mind and an array of complex technical and manual skills, her versatile art practice straddles a range of media, from paper collage and painting to sculpture, sound, photography, video, writing and installation. By appropriating culturally loaded imagery and iconography, and transforming them into new works that may be experienced 'spatially and temporally', she creates new platforms from which to view ideas of culture, tradition and interchange. Such approaches are giving new readings to our traditional understanding of the relationships between the global and the local, race and nation, the sacred and the secular as well as the post-colonial discourse.

A globetrotting artist, Abbas has had more significant solo showings abroad than at home in Pakistan (only two in Lahore and none in Karachi). Consequently, her work is not widely known or understood at large here. A recently released Green Cardamom publication, Hamra Abbas object lessons, can address this deficit considerably. It is a comprehensive monograph that consolidates her art practice and acquaints the art enthusiast with her eclectic repertoire. The detailed visuals and evaluative text, by several international writers, critics and curators, is bound to satisfy the most curious reader/ viewer.

A Pakistani born in Kuwait, Abbas relocated to Pakistan in 1985. With sculpture as her major and miniature as minor she completed her BFA and MFA from National College of Arts (NCA), Lahore in 2002. Availing a Daad scholarship she acquired a Meisterschueler degree from the Universitat der Kunste, Berlin and was awarded the Meisterschueler Prize in 2004—she also taught contemporary miniature there before returning to Pakistan in 2006 to work as Associate Professor at NCA Rawalpindi. Honing her talent as artist in residence at several institutions like Vermont Studio Centre, Kunstlerdorf Schoppingen, Gasworks and V and A Museum London, she also bagged the jury prize at the Sharjah Biennial 9 recently.

The multiplicity of practices that define Abbas's oeuvre owe their origin in some measure to her exposure to a varied range of art practices, stimuli and environments she has lived and worked in but more to her alternative even “endless ways of 'seeing' or knowing”(Anna Sloan). Possessing an uncanny ability to capture and transform a passing encounter or a random thought into a creative exercise, she branches into unexpected levels of intellectual and physical interpretations that surprise, amuse and engage the onlooker.

In conversation with Sharmini Pereira, Abbas discloses, “making objects and images through labour-intensive ways has been integral to my art practice.” This can be a result of her rigorous training in miniature art or a compelling need to constantly challenge herself because for each project she devises a new language of unique combinations. Indeed, as Anna Sloan reiterates, “it is hard to find an artist using more diverse strategies and subject matter than Hamra Abbas.”

Playing with scale--often from micro to macro—and dislodging objects from their familiar context and imbuing them with new and multiple meanings—often playful and humorous or ponderous and grave—is common to Abbas's methodology and this is most apparent in her flings with the miniature. In 'All rights reserved' (2004) she reproduces elements from an exhibition catalogue titled, 'King of the World—the Padshahnama', published in 1997 when the Padshahnama was exhibited in India, Britain and the US. The concerned images depict delivery of gifts (the sachiq) from the bridegroom to the bride for Dara Shikohs wedding. The original illuminated manuscript is now housed at the royal Library of Windsor. Digitally removing the round trays of sachiq and transposing them to another panel Abbas creates two panels one with gifts trays sans bearers and the other panel of bearers sans gifts. This apparent dislocation printed alongside the catalogue's copyright page declaring 'All rights reserved' critiques the movement of cultural property from one continent to another and consequent debate over legal ownership rights.

Similarly, 'Battle scenes' (2006) art work references a pair of miniature paintings from the Akbarnama depicting a gruesome battle between Akbar's army and his warring enemies. Decontextualising this battle scene to relook at 'war and contemporary systems of neo-imperialism', Abbas creates an animation and lenticular prints mimicking the battle ground scene in the Akbarnama miniature. Persuading visitors at various London parks to pose for her, Abass' animated work depicts an array of figures of different ages, genders and ethnic backgrounds, dressed in jeans and T-shirts, posed warrior-like against a black background. Ludicrous, fragmented and farcical, the parody critiques the hold of imperialism past and present.

'God grows on trees' (2008) consists of 99 individual portraits of children and a diasec digital print. “The portraits of the children were painted over a year and informed by my visits to madrassahs,” explained Hamra, “Viewing the current fascination with madrassahs as being akin to the orientalist painters' fascination in the 19th and early 20th centuries with the harem, I attempt to thwart these exoticised readings to portray the universality of childhood experience. In painting the portraits I attempt to reproduce the faces as faithfully as I could, marrying realism with the techniques of the miniature.”

The miniature becomes resource for another turnover as she converts its figures into sculptural form her 'In lessons on love' series. Here, Abbas stands out as the only artist to mould characters from album painting into three dimensional figures but the obvious reference to Kama Sutra renders the works too explicit for general viewership here.

Other stand out works include 'Woman in black' (2008), Abbas' sculpture of a female super-heroine, hair streaming down her back, stands at two metres tall. Brandishing a stick, this proud, buxom figure plays on the iconic press images of burqa-clad women yielding sticks as weapons when Islamabad's Lal Masjid seminary was stormed in 2007 by government troops. In 'It's a boy!' (2008), the familiar figure of a plump baby boy from Woodward's trademark gripe water bottle is blown up into an outsize entity that mocks the subcontinental tradition of placing emphasis on the birth of a male.

'Read' is a multimedia installation, a suspended labyrinth-like wooden structure, concealing speakers playing the sound of children reciting the Quran as they memorise its verses, the standard method of instruction in Pakistan's madrassahs. The viewer must walk through the labyrinth, close to the speakers, to avail the immersive experience of the work but the cacophony of sound filtering through the speakers, of children reciting the Qur'anic verses is not the orderly regimented harmony that might be expected. Indeed, the chaotic babble is reminiscent of the sounds of a large number of noisy children gathered together anywhere in the world.

The manner in which Abbas accesses and builds on her cues reveals the confidence she has in her abilities and sense of inquiry. She lunges fearlessly towards the radical and the new which can often be preposterously humorous as well. While this monograph captures her most significant moments she has just begun to peak and her best is probably yet to come.