A brush with bravery
RANA SIDDIQUI
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Attiya Shaukat’s creations are symbolic of determination and courage born out of her inner turmoil.
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PHOTO: RAJEEV BHATT
Life on canvas Attiya and her creations displayed at Anant Art Gallery.
How would you react if you see on canvas a vertebra transforming into a delicate petal? Or a spine blossoming into a tree, spectacularly bright with a golden hue? What if you see recurring images of attractive but swollen feet sometimes wrapped in blue, sometimes in red? For once, you may think the artist has used body parts as symbols to convey how attractive they can look if treated differently. Though some traditionalists who think a work of art should only be about ae
sthetics and splendour, may feel disturbed.
A young artist from Pakistan, Attiya Shaukat’s creations inspire these mixed feelings. Her works “Free Fall” in mixed media were mounted at New Delhi’s Anant Art Gallery recently. Apart from these images, a good number of works in miniature technique were also a part of the exhibition.
Her own life
Attiya’s images of spine, vertebra, lumber, ankle, foot and hospital beds are not a search to find symbols to express life in a different way, but her own life that has become different. In May, 2003, while mounting her painting on the wall from a ladder, she lost her balance and fell from an eight-foot height. She fell on her spine that gave in instantly making her disabled waist downwards. After an initial spell of pessimism and inactivity because of regular hospital trips, operations, physiotherapy and so on, she was allowed to move on a wheel chair with both her feet still numb.
“I took it as a challenge. So much did I see my fractured bones through x-ray that they started having different meanings in my mind. I was happy that I could express my pain and pleasures through art, as my hands were safe. What would have happened if I had lost them?” queries 25-year-old Attiya, caring little about her numb feet now devoid of even toe nails. Such was her determination to express her mind that she would go to college lying on an ambulance. “Because I wasn’t allowed to move my body, I could only see the sky. The sky in my works gains colour from there only,” she recalls.
Despite her restricted physical mobility, she completed B.F.A in miniatures from National College of Art, Lahore. She had already done a bachelor’s degree in painting from Lahore College for Women.
Hence, her images portray her pain at different stages of treatment. She reflects numbness in blue, bandaged feet convey a nail-less foot, a foot in shoe in “Step by Step”. In “Chained” and “Confusion”, a chained artist clearly portrays her state. Even in her miniatures she brings in these images by subtly incorporating it in the lavish lifestyles of the emperors. George Bush also makes an entry in her Iraq war miniature that portrays Iraqis in chains. In interesting mediums like gauche on marbled wasli, tea wash and haldi wash on wasli that she uses to make her self-imageher work gives out a lot of luminous hues.
These days, Attiya is working on her next batch of paintings. “Once an art writer gave ‘Never Walk’ as the title of a write-up on me. I fought with her and asked, ‘how can you give this title? What makes you think I will never walk?’ She had to change it,” smiles a chirpy Attiya concluding her chat with a shair, “Mujhe har haal main mutmayeen dekh kar, gham bhi aakhir ghabra ke khushi ban gaye”. (Finding me content with life in adverse circumstances galore, even misery decided to change its course).
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