They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It seems especially true for a recent two-person show titled, ‘Dual Genesis’, held at Chawkandi Art, Karachi. The imagery in the paintings by twin sisters Maryam and Marjan Baniasadi depicts life that is closely attuned to nature. The unobtrusive small scale of their paintings and imagery within them makes the gallery space look almost empty, inviting the viewer to revel up close in the nuances of these delightful vignettes of the artists’ imagination.

Maryam’s compositions of delicately stylised trees and fauna amidst sidewalks and a most mundane concrete environment are anchored in the Mughal miniature technique of washes on vasli or miniature tradition of layered paper. In the age where art jumps out for the viewers’ attention, the quiet imagery of the Baniasadi sisters, especially the near monochromatic paintings by Maryam appear as its antithesis. This kind of intimacy with art is fast fading, with art fairs and grand blockbuster exhibitions, having brought about a performative and “staged” element in art. Shows like these reaffirm the pleasures of experiencing the directness of an artist’s skill and sensitivity to her medium, sans the baggage of sociopolitical jargon.

‘Dual Genesis’ is a synthesis of the Baniasadi sisters’ distinct stylistic features and imagery. Maryam comes from a miniature art training, and Marjan from studio specialisation, both with post-graduate degrees from the National College of Arts, Lahore. The twins moved to Pakistan in 2012, when their father was a Consul General of Iran, based in Lahore. Cross-cultural influences infuse their work, as Maryam speaks of artists travelling to the Indian Sub-Continent especially in the time of Emperor Humayun.

The imagery of plants growing out of pavements and other built surroundings comes from Maryam’s direct observation. She starts by photographing and then lets her imagination create a new space. The process from a familiar, even mundane environment transforms into a new reality by the artist’s imagination. The near monotone palette, she says, is influenced by Persian miniature painting. The minimalistic division of space exists within the delicate linear outlining infused with patterning, anchored in the Mughal miniature tradition. This subtlety of colour, where even colour has to be imagined, is no doubt absorbed from cultural factors such as language.

Twin sisters, Maryam and Marjan Baniasadi, depict a subtle, beautiful coexistence of the old and the new in a collaborative show

In Persian text, indirectness is considered an artistic style with the aim of achieving respect and indicating harmony in human communication. Persian readers are expected to realise the connotation of a text, and the writer gives room to his interlocutors for interpretation and reflective thinking. Similarly, Maryam and Marjan insist on giving the viewer the freedom to imagine.

Maryam’s compositions propel us to wonder which cultural time and space they belong to, or what part of the day she has depicted. Her process takes her to a timeless reality where the viewer must negotiate with the ambiguities therein. That is where the poetry of the work resides. The underlying concerns are of the cycles of nature, which she finds in the oddest spaces, as beautiful shrubs, intricately stylised idyllic trees, alluding to change and rebirth. She alters the detailing of the fauna according to her liking, free from any particular tradition.

Marjan’s exquisite oil paintings are in a predominant carmine red, with blues and reds typical of Oriental and Persian carpets. The color red, conventionally extracted from the Madder plant, invokes courage, joy, luck and a vibrant life force. However, Marjan’s reference only exists because of a carpet in the artist’s home, which she observed daily. This kind of an immediate reference does not mean that she is consciously drawing from or trying to compose certain imagery, but simply because it is part of her surroundings.

In Marjan’s oils-on-canvas, there is a beautiful incidental co-existence of the old and the new. Her intuitive response to the age-old Tree of Life alludes to the sweetness of Persian love poetry. Nowhere else have the charms of natural objects, of fruits and flowers, of trees and birds, and of the sublime been more poetically imagined. Yet, Marjan’s imagery remains firmly in the present, perhaps as a quiet suggestion that beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder.

‘Dual Genesis’ was up at the Chawkandi Art gallery from February 22nd to March 3rd, 2022

Published in Dawn, EOS, March 20th, 2022