ISLAMABAD: Five female artists from diverse cultural and geographical backgrounds have produced some brilliant artworks depicting social relations, inner self and nature’s complexities during a two-week artist residency programme.

The artists from Italy, Iran, Iraq and Pakistan, who were selected from among 10 shortlisted artists, demonstrated their creativity and shared their experiences at the second edition of the Dastaangoi gallery’s artist residency programme that concluded on Oct 27.

“This year’s residency was very unique as we had artists coming from Europe, Middle East and Pakistan sharing their experiences and working together,” said Amad Mian, curator and director of the gallery.

The artworks represent the collaborative efforts of the artists with their unique skills and practices learning from each other, he said.

“The artist residency aims to bring artists from all around the world to Pakistan for two weeks to exchange ideas, share experiences and build cultural bridges whilst furthering their work through discussion and experimentation,” he added.

Ulrike Belloni from Milan, Italy, exclusively makes portraits and still life following the sight-size method whereby image and subject are placed side by side at a distance, in order to perceive the whole.

“My main interest is painting portraits and still life but since moving to Ireland I have also begun to paint landscapes.

“I am naturally drawn to patterns, geometric motifs, and I try to include them in my painting aesthetic,” Ms Belloni said.

During her residency she has painted everyday life moments, like tables prepared for tea or a meal, with beautiful Pakistani objects, colourful materials and traditional food.

She has also painted a few portraits using materials with patterns, tiles and carpets as backgrounds.

Miramar Hussain from Iraq developed passion for visual art and forms of nonverbal expression since her childhood. She aims to understand what it means to be a woman in a modern Arab society.

She uses painting as a form of response to injustices and gender-based discrimination.

Ms Miramar’s primary medium is murals as according to her, it brings fine art from museums and galleries into the street, expressing common people’s lives and delivering messages of social justice directly to the society it revolves around.

“Like my parents I want to paint the beauty and intricacies and formations nature produces,” she said.

The Istanbul-based Iranian Maryam Lamei Harvani said: “During my residency I had a chance to fine tune my technique further, and interact with amazing people.”

Maryam’s work is a blend of traditional method of flower and bird and her own style. She has gone beyond the traditional methods and carved her own niche.

She has created some beautiful works by combining the traditional methods of flower and birds with modern techniques.

Ramsha Haider from Chak Hyderabad has always been very fond of folklores, poems and stories of wanderers and sufis. One of the famous poems, ‘Conference of the Birds’ by Persian Sufi mystic poet Fariduddin Attar of Nishapur caught her imagination.

“Although I take idea and inspiration from a poem, I translate my imagination on canvas. I visualise the world in fiction which is serene, peaceful and way better than this world we live in and paint it,” she said.

Tahira Noreen’s work for the past several years has stemmed from a singular entity, ‘Line’. A line, no more than a millimetre in thickness, forms a network of endless vortexes on her surfaces.

She achieves this painstakingly with a precision cutter on wasli. As the cutter scores through the surface, it unravels each layer embedded within, forming unique tiered contours.

Published in Dawn, October 30th, 2022