Mussarat Mirza Monograph 2022 (Preview)

In the realm of light

MUSSARAT MIRZA

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First published on the occasion of the retrospective exhibition

Mussarat Mirza: Har ja tu In the realm of light

Koel Gallery, Karachi

27 August — 14 September 2022

Sponsor's Note

HBL as an institution is part of Pakistan’s fabric. As the oldest and largest bank, it also remains committed to playing its part in nation building. One of the ways it does this is by promoting art, especially in public places, and by celebrating the outstanding artists that the country has produced.

It is in this spirit that HBL is honoured to support Mussarat Mirza’s monograph. Mirza is one of Pakistan’s senior artists and an art educator. She has inspired many young students, having served as a Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Sindh, Jamshoro and as Head of the Department of Fine Arts there. Mirza, through her work, provides a window into her surroundings, Sukkur, her hometown, which is often showcased in her paintings. Her earthy colour palette is remarkable and sensitive. Mirza’s mystifying world of spirituality is a surprising element that has intrigued viewers and admirers of her work.

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The HBL Art Collection is also a proud custodian of Mussarat Mirza’s works, as part of its collection. HBL Art Committee

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Rah-e-noor 2006-7. Oil on canvas. 36 x 36 in

True Refuge

Maha Malik

I. A town called Sukkur

In or about 1956, Mussarat Mirza painted her frst landscape. It was also the frst time she used oil paint, mixing pigments with what she then had at hand, mustard seed oil. “I sat on that charpai and painted my neighbourhood,” she recalls with amusement, so many years later. “Then I got up and painted my place of view into the work.” This scene references Jilani Road, Sukkur, by the artist’s home. Its description might appear prosaic: a wide street bordered by houses, a bit of sky and loose electric cable. But for the startling, almost spectral mood of the painting.

Here we see Mirza’s fabled “earth tones” for the frst time. From the front left of the frame into the foreground of the work, shades of ochre pour across as though indicating the ground were burning hot. Neighbourhood homes are rendered in tones of a dusty greyish-blueish-green (already, her colour-mixing); with areas of a dark jaman for shadow, and touches of light-glare along walls. Windows in the painting give of an anthropomorphic sense, interior feeling as well as an outward direction of looking. The wide road (now barely space for footfall) converges in the distance. At its end stand two fgures, rendered so delicately, one almost misses them in frst view. Specks of red, and clear blue, they catch a glint of sun amidst the brooding weight of dust.

For a ten or twelve year-old, it is not just the architectural intelligence, or her rendering skills, which are remarkable. There is the matter of light. To the contemporary eye this scene bears the feel

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Title unknown 2012. Oil on canvas. 31 x 46.5 in (detail, previous page and above)

Mussarat Mirza: Poet of the Desert

Salima Hashmi

An ethereal presence of light seeps and spreads, permeating the picture plane. The pigments seem saturated with this luminescence, losing their individual intensity, assembling themselves into a common hue, a shared purpose.This light-drenched image enfolds the viewer in a moment of solitariness. The moment—an extended pause when physical surroundings seem to dissolve into immateriality—is Mussarat Mirza’s state of being. To register this immateriality is to understand the essence of Mirza’s work.

Through over fve decades of art practice the artist has defed attempts to precisely categorise her oeuvre. Trained under Anna Molka Ahmed’s1 stringent eye at the Punjab University, she evaded the predictable artistic pathways which became the recognisable "style" of artists emerging from the University’s Fine Art Department.

Mirza returned to her native Sukkur not too long after graduating with honours, in 1968. And she soon began her teaching career at the newly-established Department of Fine Arts of the University of Sindh at Jamshoro, across the river from Hyderabad. Ensconced in the women’s hostel, she became a presence there for almost three decades. Between Jamshoro and Sukkur, she found her inner voice.

Gradually she commenced on an exploration of tangible spaces in her environs: the winding streets, doorways, apertures of her town. It was here she chanced upon the occasional silhouettes of women disappearing behind windows, or tending to their work in the courtyards, in an unending

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Title

unknown. 1983. Oil on canvas. 32 x 22 in

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Two birds. 1982. Oil on canvas. 38.5 x 18.5 in

If you open out the window now, you will see houses built of concrete, of brick and mortar.

Earlier on there were only mud homes. Walls wrapping around the roofs, and within them, openings through which the light poured in. I was fascinated by this world.

And such is the first impulse for work. All of my art is anchored in observation. I start with a sketch. That is my basis. I may begin with a landscape, make a natural drawing of it, and then on canvas, slowly, I bring it towards my vision. (kaam ko nigah pe lana…)

This takes time.

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Mussarat Mirza Sukkur, 2021

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Title unknown 1983. Oil on canvas. 36 x 24 in

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Pyase log. 2001-2. Oil on canvas. 24 x 42 in

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Dust storm. 1988. Oil on canvas. 24 x 36 in

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Dust storm. 1988. Oil on canvas. 24 x 36 in (detail)

The weathering of space

What does it mean to perceive the world through a dust storm, what feeling do these wind lines carry. The weathering of space—registering atmosphere, the presence of the weathering condition on personal experience, on the space of the city in which she lives—this is a powerful, deeply situated current in the art of Mussarat Mirza.

It forms a set of questions that the artist examines throughout her work. How to create the presence of atmospheric conditions which are not in themselves tangible. The inquiry extends as a way of looking at how aspects of the invisible world may be generated, and how they are given autonomy on the canvas. Perhaps its signifcance has to do with building the plausibility of certain things, that are not “standard,” or which a viewing public may not easily or necessarily register.

We often think of the painter’s observation as purely a tool in service of realism. In Mirza’s work though, one is reminded of other senses, of feeling, and of touch. How sensory experience other than vision can contribute to the construction of reality itself. Perhaps it has to do with this embodied sense, a way in which she renders the experience of dust, in both more experiential and conceptual ways. Through her work, we see weathering not as a static process; and the storm, as moving, eroding, concealing and reshaping lived environments.

Mirza’s images are anchored within specifc locations and built structures, within the geography of Sukkur and Upper Sindh. There is a realism to her work in this way. Her dwellings orient space. When I look at her paintings, I feel they are pinned to a particular moment, and they register a particular sensation. At the same time, they seem to hold a quality of timelessness. There are certain moments of recognition, as visual perception, spiritual consciousness, political concerns, in the way of a line perhaps, internal feeling, light. These are powerful alignments that her canvases sustain—one could call them ephemeral moments of recognition.

Within contemporary art practice there is a strong presence of urban issues. In Mirza’s own urbanism, the weathering motif persists, as an encompassing force within which all appears subservient. And then there is the artist’s tactile response. The harsh reality of the city is countered by the sensuality of her art making. The painting process that she crafts is through its surface, a counter-force, making things more bearable, love-able, and ultimately, more livable.

Over fve decades of work, Mussarat Mirza’s politics include her commitment to this painting process. Through it she is witnessing, documenting and ofering testimony to more contained narratives of place and locality within Pakistani art.

Naiza Khan

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Title unknown. 1982-3. Oil on canvas. 33.5 x 33.5 in

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Dimensions of loneliness. 1982-3. Oil on canvas. 33.5 x 33.5 in

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Quest for enlightenment. 2001–2. Oil on canvas. 24 x 36 in (previous page, detail above)

Mussarat Mirza’s earthen worlds

The art of Mussarat Mirza is a rich resource for historical studies. As an archive it documents shifts in the built fabric of Sukkur, including aspects of the city that may no longer exist.

Sukkur is an ancient region that has been inhabited over millenia. It has conventionally served as a river port, a trading post by virtue of its location on the west banks of the Indus. Post-partition, it used to be a laidback, quasi-agricultural town. You could say its built environment began to change in the early 1990s. For a number of reasons, around this time, the city grew in its contemporary identity as a commercial hub. And its built structures began to evolve vertically.

At the heart of this phenomenon, however, the morphology of the old city sustained. Not set on a gridiron pattern, its organic form remained the same. That is, right on top of the old was built the new. And so we see new brick constructions on narrow winding ways; we see the orientation of homes in multiple directions. This forms the present-day skyline of Sukkur. And it is apparent in much of Mussarat Mirza’s work after 2000.

At ground level, diferent time periods in the city are fused together. One may imagine entire earthen worlds within the ruin of an old wall. Built of handmade earthen bricks and organic masonry, the region’s mud architecture is known to be responsive to local climate. It keeps interiors cool in the summer months and warm during winter. It is also responsive to light fows and ventilation, and to aspects of cultural privacy. It must be refurbished seasonally.

This indigenous knowledge form, and its lived universe, appears very much present in the art of Mussarat Mirza. We may sense it in the rendering of a thick courtyard wall, and its remarkable patina; or the dome of a wayside shrine; a roof parapet with small window-like openings, to sky above just as to street below; here in the artist’s rendering of adobe homes, her shaded passage ways. There is a sense of someone looking, as though looking out from a place within. Her paintings seem to witness the passing of this earthen life-world.

Reviewing colonial archives of Sukkur, one notices how they cover the signifcant subject, the “picturesque” view. In a similar vein, artists often render landmarks, and those landmarks usually remain. As a viewer, you can experience them as identifers of place. But in Mirza’s work—because she has not focused on conventionally historic sites—you cannot really say which street this is or what locality. Often, it may be that the particular world in her image no longer exists. In some ways, her philosophy of painting feels consistent with the material philosophy of earthen architecture.

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Dr Anila Naeem and Dr Noman Ahmed

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Pigeon holes. 1968. Oil on canvas. 27.5 x 66.5 in Ever and endless. 2005. Oil on canvas. 24 x 30 in (previous page)

Remembrance of Things Present

Quddus Mirza

In her essay, Dangerous Liaison, Guadeloupe author Maryse Condé declares: “I am very fond of saying that I write neither in French nor in Creole. I write in Maryse Condé.”1 In a similar fashion Mussarat Mirza neither paints landscapes nor abstract imagery, she paints Mussarat Mirza. That unique art form, distinct and diferent, yet accessible to varying groups of viewers, using multiple routes.

One such viewer, a child of seven or eight, enters Mirza's studio in Sukkur. He spends the entire afternoon in it, while his family is visiting their relatives. He is fascinated by colours, brushes, pictures, as well as the painter. I remember, it is the late 1960s. During those cruel summer days of Sukkur the child takes refuge in her studio—a small quadrangle (or was it a hexagonal space?) —to fnd Mirza busy at her easel, oblivious to an unknown intruder, with fnished and incomplete canvases laying around her.

I still remember those painted surfaces: the section of a hedge, urchins on a wooden cart, and mud houses. Images not wilted with the passage of ffty years or so. This aspect, that attracted a child to her paintings and glued a grown-up to her aesthetics, this is the purity of her vision. Mirza does not pursue a style, nor does she pick a subject, or follow a movement. She responds to herself. To her surroundings, both outer and inner.

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Title unknown. 2010. Oil on canvas. 30 x 42 in (detail, opposite page)

Title unknown. 2009. Oil on paper on board. 25.5 x 39 in (previous page)

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Sensing the feminine

It is in the small detail. Just a shaft of light from somewhere. Just that corner in a place that becomes signifcant for her. One solitary alam in the distance. Mussarat Mirza’s entire sensibility is sensitive to this kind of atmospheric detail.

It is so whether her gaze is cast outwards upon architectural space or is turned in towards rendering domestic space. Mirza creates atmosphere in her work. And she does so in a way you may never otherwise notice. This is something the artist is living.

I refect on her alongside two other icons of art-making in Pakistan, Zahoor ul Akhlaq and Khalid Iqbal. All three are masters in the way of paint application. Mirza’s subtle tonal gradations, her rhythms of application and removal. Zahoor in his exceptional strokes, and his purposeful use of pardakht. Iqbal, employing thin paint with such fnesse and delicacy, in order to build up his surfaces.

In terms of intent though, Mirza’s art is not purely intellectual in the way Zahoor interprets his work. Nor is it observational in the way Khalid Iqbal interprets his art. She is engaged in a very diferent kind of practice.

Mussarat Mirza looks, and she feels what she sees. There is a kind of softness and sensitivity in that gaze that is selecting detail, or working out perspective. Mirza’s art is not concerned with building up an archetypal narrative. Hers is an immersive space. She is really engaged with expression. And feeling. And hence, a kind of felt truth to her work.

Refection on Mirza is also about renewing language. A way perhaps of speaking of the feminine. This aspect is inherent in all her work: in its intimate detail, in responsiveness to environment and spaces personal to the artist, in the minor narrations. This sense of the feminine rests, also, in the tremendous strength one experiences in her canvases.

Naazish Ata-Ullah

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Rah-e-ishq dost har sa’at. 2013. Oil on canvas. 41 x 41 in

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Muntazir. 2011. Oil on canvas. 12 x 14 in

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Title unknown. 2012. Oil on canvas. 21.5 x 30 in

Hain muntazir. 2011. Oil on canvas. 49 x 61 in (previous page)

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Can spring be far behind (I) 2021. Oil on canvas. 24 x 24 in

In the rendering of "alif"… for myself there is a different source…

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Title unknown. 2008. Oil on canvas. 14 x 12 in

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Sketches

[These are] drawings on small pieces of paper, the artist’s private notes to herself. They are remnants of "process," which demonstrate the moment in which an idea occurs. A response to light…to movement inside a doorway, the silhouettes of women as they wend their way to a shrine, all documented in the artist’s shorthand. These observations have consistently been expanded to form the visual framework for so many of Mirza’s paintings. We may recognise in the vignettes, her preference for strongly centralised compositions and a minimalist approach to form.

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(Salima Hashmi. Mussarat Mirza: Pages from an Artist’s Diary. Rohtas 2 Gallery, 2008)

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Watercolours

Mussarat Mirza came to watercolours during the 1980s. It began as reprieve from the labour of painting in oils. “I was overcome by a sense of solitariness with oils, and felt the need for some sort of a turning point. I found it almost by accident, when I returned to the watercolours of my childhood years. There was immediate chemistry between the medium and myself.” This afnity soon became method. Her frst exhibition, Melody of Landscape (Rohtas Gallery, Islamabad, 1985) showcased the pigments’ delicate transparency; colours fowing across paper, resolving with fresh pace and vibrancy. Mirza became internationally acknowledged for her watercolours during the following two decades, although very few are documented. The subtle nuances of tone on tone she developed during this period—and a feel for emergent and dissolving form—these nourished her later work within the medium of oils.

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Mussarat Mirza

Born in Sukkur, Pakistan, 1946

Lives and works in Sukkur

Education

MFA. Punjab University, Lahore. 1965–1967 BA. Lahore College for Women, Lahore. 1961–1965

Exhibitions

2022 Har ja tu. In the realm of light. A retrospective of Mussarat Mirza. Curated by Maha Malik. Koel Gallery, Karachi

2021 Khat-o-kitabat. Group show curated by Nurayah Sheikh Nabi and R.M. Naeem. Koel Gallery Karachi (online) and O Art Space, Lahore

2020 Past Present Future. Group show curated by Nurayah Sheikh Nabi and R.M. Naeem. Koel Gallery, Karachi and O Art Space, Lahore

2019 Mera Safar. Group show curated by Noorjehan Bilgrami and Muhammad Zeeshan. Koel Gallery, Karachi

2016 Mussarat Mirza & Anwar Jalal Shemza. Lahore Literary Festival. Zahoorul Akhlaq Gallery, NCA, Lahore

2016 Pakistani Voices. Group show, Nomad Gallery, Islamabad with Alma Centre, Oslo.

2013 Intimacy (Mussarat Mirza with Ayessha Quraishi, Lala Rukh, Meher Afroz, and Naiza Khan). Curated by Maha Malik. Koel Gallery, Karachi

2012 Landscapes, Cityscapes and Related Conceptual Paintings. Punjab University College of Art and Design in collaboration with the Lahore Museum. Contemporary Painting Gallery, Lahore

2011 Hain Muntazir. Chawkandi Art, Karachi

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