hamra abbas

Talk @ ROM 2

hamra — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 05:13:37 +0000

Hamra Abbas: An Intimate Artist’s Talk
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, ON
Friday, March 19, 2010 – 7 pm

Beyond the Page

hamra — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 18:45:24 +0000

Beyond the Page: The Miniature as Attitude in Contemporary Art from Pakistan
Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena, CA
February 18, 2010 – June 27, 2010

Beyond the page_review

hamra — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 21:10:07 +0000

Exhibition of Contemporary Art from Pakistan to Open at Pacific Asia Museum

Love Yourself @ San Francisco Art Institute, CA

hamra — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:15:07 +0000

EVERYDAY MIRACLES (EXTENDED)
San Francisco Art Institute, CA
October 1, 2009 – January 30, 2010

Paradise Bath @ RedCat, LA

hamra — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 10:45:44 +0000

EVERYDAY MIRACLES (EXTENDED)
RedCat, Los Angeles, CA
Guest curated by Hou Hanru
November 22, 2009 – January 17, 2010

Ride 2 @ Asia Society Museum, New York

hamra — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:13:06 +0000

Hanging Fire: Contemporary Art from Pakistan
Asia Society Museum, New York, NY
September 10, 2009 – January 3, 2010

Read @ Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

hamra — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 05:21:31 +0000

Hamra Abbas: Read
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto
Institute for Contemporary Culture
Until March 28, 2010

ICC’s Read

hamra — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 23:58:01 +0000

ICC’s Read Provides Another Response to the ROM’s Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibition

Ride 2 @ Asia Society, NY

hamra — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 05:37:32 +0000

Contradictions Remain Vital to Pakistan and Its Art
by Randy Kennedy
The New York Times, September 2, 2009

Visiting Artist Lecture: Hamra Abbas

hamra — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:17:17 +0000

Visiting Artist Lecture: Hamra Abbas
Riley Seminar Room, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Work_Love Yourself

admin — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 22:25:07 +0000

<< click for more images

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

Work_Paradise Bath

admin — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 22:25:26 +0000

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.

Work_Please do not step: Loss of a magnificent story

admin — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 15:35:12 +0000

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.

Work_Zikr

admin — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 15:37:20 +0000

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

admin — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 15:39:25 +0000

White is the New Black (2009) | Digital prints

Work_Buffaloes in Combat

admin — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 15:40:18 +0000

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

Work_Ride 2

admin — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 15:41:36 +0000

Ride 2 (2008) is a 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.

Work_Woman in Black

admin — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 06:22:54 +0000

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.

Work_its a boy!

admin — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 07:36:53 +0000

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

Work_God Grows on Trees

admin — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 22:48:22 +0000

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.