hamra abbas

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.