hamra abbas

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Woman in Black (2011). Comprised of three stained glass windows measuring three meters in height, Woman in Black depicts the iconic image of a fictional female super-heroine. To view the work the audience is invited to sit on pew-like benches, inside a darkened room reminiscent of a place of worship. Stained glass, as an art form, reached its height in the middle Ages. Like the illuminated manuscript, it was used to illustrate narratives of the Bible to a largely illiterate populace. Seen from inside a place of worship, such windows were deliberately intended to focus the attention of the worshipper on the sacred image by literally ‘blacking out’ contact with the outside world. The interplay of light and dark have often served as metaphors for good and evil and are deliberately employed by Abbas to accentuate the mysterious powers of the female figure, enshrined within the glass. Shown in the company of an army, brandishing swords, and decapitated fighters, the female figure is shown either under attack or quelling an act of violence. She is placed in the middle of a scene of conflict, suggestive of the worldly realities of contemporary society. Though Abbas uses traditional Indian miniature painting to depict the female figure, stylistic flourishes borne out of the stained glass process intercede. Such quirks register the overlap of traditions and skills within the work. Conceptualizing the belief that the message is found in the medium, a tenet that informs much religious art, Abbas playfully adapts an illuminated painting into an illuminated window, whose image by design, come and goes with the fading of the day. Sharmini Pereira

Cityscapes 3 (2011). It is not uncommon for artists and writers to take a particular city as their muse. Cities like Paris, Istanbul, Venice, Cairo, London and countless others have been the subject of literary reflections, charcoal drawings, oil and water paintings, fiction, and for a host of other purposes that range from the absurd to the sublime. In my work, instead of focusing on my home city, or any one city, I aim to develop an investigative project that views a number of cities from a nomadic perspective. Thus being in contrast from the position that attempts to speak as an insider, as has been the custom. Each Cityscapes attempts to reference a peculiar aspect of the city’s history, memory, or the subtext and that has its own story to tell. Cityscapes 3 was done in New York during the winter of 2010/11, and features life-casted heads of Peter, Pete, Tomi, Kleber and Terry.

Su’ar (2011). The word su’ar is used both in Urdu (dialect) and Punjabi for boar. Boar is a repugnant animal in Islam whose meat is forbidden to Muslims. This is seen to be largely in line with all prophets prior to the Prophet Muhammad. The Quran and the tradition (Sunnah) of the Prophet categorically forbid its consumption on the basis that it is impure. Hence it is also used as a pejorative, and if the occasion permits, to be generously used as a hideous insult. As a result of this bias, the boar is seen as a creature that is the filthiest in entire animal kingdom. Due to this view the boar has become an image or motif for shamelessness and depravity of the worst kind. Anyone who is excessively greedy, lacking in hygiene, eats continuously, has no respect for any individual, sexually promiscuous (to the extent of incest) or devoid of any sensitivity may legitimately be called a su’ar. One must add here that it is beside the point if chickens, or for that matter, any other animal may be seen to indulge in the same habits as the boar. Irfan Moeen Khan

Cityscapes 1 (2010) – seemingly an ordinary collection of touristy photographs of Istanbul, is made truly ordinary by removing one element that upon first glance generously gives away the city’s character and history. Each shot taken at the crack of dawn is embedded in a narrative that invites the audience to imagine waking up one morning to find the city changed overnight, literally. Since a long time the minarets have been seen as symbols of political Islam in the Western imagination. In the Muslim world, minarets are part of the wider socio-cultural and aesthetic framework, standing above the winding alleys below, as they are, silent spectators to the bustling market places around, listening from the heights the daily conversations of the multitudes scattered on the ground. One may imagine that the minarets of Istanbul are its memory organs that allow the city to recognize itself at each sunrise. 

Why do fake hands not clap (2010) consists of a dozen sets of the artist’s hands (plaster casts) in clapping motion, and disintegrating as a result. In the video, the clapping produce an eerie soundtrack to represent the destructive impulses cloaked in our collective approval. The sound is not one of applause, and yet it is created by the very act of applause. So it is this disconnect that produces the anxiety, and plunges the viewer in a landscape of broken shards falling all around. click for video

Love Yourself (2009) is a continuation of the my Love Series. It is an installation of vibrating, toylike fighter jets, missiles, bombs, and bullets that, when switched on together with the neon works on the wall, create a vibrant installation of sound, movement, and light. The background neon reminds us that it’s “as good as the real thing”. The installation seeks to draw the attention of the viewer by a titillating display of colorful vibrating objects and blatant sexual innuendo—voyeurism giving way to a disturbing realization that these symbols of violence have been turned into pleasure objects.
video documentation by Kent Long

Paradise Bath (2009) is a set of 9 photographs, and an outcome of a performance I did during my visit to Thessaloniki, Greece. I was immediately drawn to the first Ottoman bath-house built there in 1444. Known as Bey Hammam or Paradise Bath, it stands in the city center as one of the main tourist destinations, as well as a symbol of the country’s Muslim past. This work takes the archetypal Orientalist image of a bath-scene to highlight issues of race, memory and power while referencing the ritual of washing/cleansing — symbolic in Islam and associated with regaining purity.

Please do not step: Loss of a magnificent story (2009) is a site-specific work for Victoria and Albert Museum, London. In this work I use the method of storytelling (dastangoi) to tell a tale of loss and legacy, interlaced with elements of satire and humour. Borrowing from the idea of storytelling, Please do not step weaves together narratives within narratives.

In this is a sign for those who reflect (2009) is inspired by my attendances at meditation sessions in Pakistan. Also called zikr, these were primarily meditations of a Sufi tradition. The movement of the walls, synchronizing with the sounds of breathing, recorded at these sessions, can be read or misread as an enclosing experience. My interest however, is to recreate elements of a sensory experience to imagine the power of synchronizing to one single idea or belief. In this is a sign for those who reflect is commissioned by 9th Sharjah Biennale. video documentation

Ride 2 (2008) is based on a mythical animal called Buraq, traditionally the Holy Prophet Mohammad’s ride that carried him from Mecca to Jerusalem and back on the event of Mi’raj in the 7th century. The image of Buraq has an iconic value in the popular culture of Pakistan, often seen painted on trucks, and portrayed as a winged horse with the head of a woman.
Ride 2 is part of other rides, under-construction.