hamra abbas

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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 recent 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

White is the New Black (2009) | Digital prints

Buffalos in Combat (2008) directly references a 16th C Mughual miniature painting depicting a pair of buffalo with horns locked in battle. The subject matter of this painting was popular during the reign of Emperor Akbar (1556-1605), where artists took pride in depicting vibrant and naturalistic scenes of courtly sports. Abbas renders this scene in life-size sculptural form, exploring the spectacle of death under state-sponsored systems of violence. Abbas uses historical images as a means to comment on the normalization of violence in the contemporary world, reflecting on state sanctioned terror and its relationship to underworld violence. Haema Sivanesan

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.

Woman in Black (2008), Abbas’ sculpture of a female super-heroine, hair streaming down her back, stands at two meters tall. Brandishing a stick, this proud, buxom figure plays on the iconic press images of burka clad women yielding sticks as weapons when Islamabad’s Red Mosque seminary was stormed in 2007 by government troops. The artist’s cross-cultural take on the super-hero genre is her monument to the potency of a benevolent yet assertive feminine power in a world reeling from the effects of militant violence, perpetrated largely by men. The poster created by the artist reproduces an image of her sculptural work ‘advertising’ The Adventures of the Woman in Black, hinting at the sense of mischief behind the voluptuous sculpture – the superpowers of this Woman in Black derive from her ability to make people perform acts of love.

It’s a Boy! (2008), translates the familiar figure of a plump baby boy from Woodward’s trademark gripe water bottle into the supra-real form of a gigantic action figure or parade float. Abbas returns us to a moment before we learned to differentiate high art from kitsch, and gods from comic book heroes. In a similar manner, she reworks the form of the original object, reducing certain features and exaggerating others, to tap into a broader gestalt. Anna J. Sloan

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 (religious schools) in Pakistan. 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 digital print was added to the work later. This is a photograph of trees along a road in Lahore, that are nailed with metal plates which reproduce the 99 names or attributes of God in Islamic tradition, and in fact gave the work its title as well. Also to my fascination is the ubiquity of the number 99 in the incongruous context of a psychologically critical pricing point in consumer society.

In Please do not step 2 (2008) Hamra Abbas uses thin interlacing strips of paper to form the Arabian stalactite work that has been stuck to the floor of the gallery. This dramatic and at the same time delicate and ephemeral work is around 30 meters long and crosses the natural path followed by visitors to the exhibition. In the form of a text, it traces out clear message, despite its size, whispers ‘Please do not step”. Enrique Martinez

Abbas works in many different media, inventing, intriguing, and critical, ways to comment on conventional ideas. In Paper Plates (2008), her target is the ‘skewed dynamics of cultural consumption’. Thin strips of paper have been printed with the phrase, ‘Please get served’, endlessly repeated. Discs of paper collage were made by combining the strips in complex geometrical patterns, which are recognisably Islamic. The discs were then hot-pressed into paper plates, a part of everyday life in every continent. The plates, though, are full of holes and cannot be used to ‘get served’. Tim Stanley

Lessons on Love, in its first incarnation in 2004, was shaped in unfired clay. The image was culled from a coffee table volume of erotic miniatures that showed an amorous couple entwined in the acts of lovemaking and hunting. The political balancing act between lovemaking and violence at play in the work was brought to the fore when a series of three similar couples were made for the Istanbul Biennial (2007). On this occasion three sculptures were fashioned out of hundreds of kilograms of brightly coloured Plasticine – the material’s overt playfulness and malleability lent the work an exaggerated dynamism, drawing out the discomfort of the figures’ conflict-ridden pose with a palpable sense of amusement. Hammad Nasar

Read is a multi-media installation, a suspended labyrinth-like wooden structure, concealing speakers playing the sound of children reciting the Qur’an as they memorize its verses, the standard method of instruction in Pakistan’s madrassahs. The title of the work comes from the command that the prophet Mohammad was said to have been given by God when the Qur’an was revealed to him. Abbas has structured the work so that the viewer must walk through the labyrinth, close to the speakers, offering them an immersive experience of the work. In Read 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.

Battle Scenes (2006) references a pair of miniature paintings from The Akbarnama (c.1590), a 16th Century Mughal album chronicling the life of the third Mughal Emperor Akbar. These paintings depict a gruesome battle between the emperor Akbar’s army and his warring enemies, and are typical of those produced by his imperial atelier. Working in the post 9/11 context, Abbas draws on imagery from The Akbarnama to undertake a critique of war and contemporary systems of neo-imperialism. Following the diptych form and compositional arrangement of the paintings found in The Akbarnama, Abbas’ 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. For this work Abbas persuaded visitors at various London parks to pose for her; her subjects representing a cosmopolitan snapshot of London. Haema Sivanesan

At the heart of The Making of English Portraits (2006) are three meticulously executed portraits, which move back and forth across the screen, continuously splitting, and then reforming, in a rhythmic pendulum-like motion. Abbas’ residency at the V&A museum exposed her to the richness of colonial collecting. Alongside her appreciation of the aesthetics of these objects, particularly her keen eye for strong patterns, it is the nature of interaction and engagement with museum collecting that concerns her. Divia Patel

Left Right (2006) is an outcome of the Vasl International Artists Workshop, Gadani, Pakistan

Men in White (2004) is a sketch for my next work.

MoMA is the Star (2004) is based on the footage made outside the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin on the last day of the exhibition MoMA in Berlin – ‘the art event of 2004′. MoMA in Berlin was made possible due to the extensive renovation and expansion of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, and was visited by an unexpected number of 1.2 million visitors in the 7 month (February 20 – September 19, 2004) duration of the exhibition. video clip

Lessons on Love (2004) stems from a reproduction of a painting in a coffee table collection of Indian miniatures in which an amorous pair is shown in a howdah on horseback in the midst of a hunting scene. The artist was amused by the compelling irony of the armed act of love vis-à-vis the volume’s title “Kama Sutra” (Lessons on Love).

In All Right Reserved (2004), the blatant reproduction of the exhibition catalogue’s copyright page wrenches into the public domain Abbas’ concerns over authority and control. By flouting the explicit demands of the copyright holders, the work transforms itself into an eloquent comment on the movement of cultural property, and questions whether it is indeed possible or desirable to retain any degree of autonomy over a work of art. Sophie Gordon

In Please do not step (2004) Abbas creates a territory where art is rescued from the archives of sacred books and translation is mirrored in shades. While the collage of geometric paper tiles reminds the audience upon entering the space to Please do not step, one’s attention is immediately drawn towards the four paintings… Simone Wille

Have a Break (2004) captures a mundane moment of Berlin’s main train station (Zoologischer Garten) in a jovial and satirical fashion.

First Lesson of a Foreign Country (2003) illustrates the early experience of seven immigrants, six Indian scientists and myself, as we learn German in Leipzig. The work echoes the efforts of settling in, and the ever uncertain relationship between India and Pakistan, the two countries with much to share, and to claim, historically and geographically.

Art and Ashes (2002) | Gallery National College of Arts, Lahore

More Smoke than Fire (2002) | Gallery National College of Arts, Lahore