L ike a mystery mistress, future is unknown, elusive and distant, yet desirable. To an artist, future embodies a sort of surprise. For both the maker and the viewer of an image, the prime question or issue is what the artist will produce next; how the past will shape or enhance the present and emerge into a new form related and relevant to one’s aesthetic concerns and pictorial expressions.
These concepts and queries often intrigue, instigate – and entrance a person following the development of a visual artist. Not too infrequently a creative person manages to shock and impress his/ her audience through a peculiar innovation and imagination visible in the work of Iram Zia Raja, especially the tapestry-based art from her solo exhibition, Texture of Time (June 11-24, Canvas Gallery, Karachi). Raja, a trained textile designer and academic, currently the dean of Design Department at the National College of Arts, Lahore, has a distinct element of originality in her work.
It showcases present practices but also responds to the glorious tradition of pattern making in the subcontinent. Textile has been generally linked to females imagined as weaving, embroidering, stitching, and assembling patchworks. From the Andes plains to the plateaus of Central Asia, and in various regions of India, Africa, Far East, Central and South America, women are the makers of quilts, shawls, spreads, runners and wearable stuff.
Having previously been exiled from the discourse of art history, today te.
