Maliha Azami’s ‘Quintessence’ showcased
LAHORE: A solo exhibition of paintings titled ‘Quintessence’ by Maliha Azami Aga kicked off at the Hamail Art Gallery on Wednesday. Renowned painter Mian Ijazul Hassan and Punjab University (PU) Vice Chancellor (VC) Dr Mujahid Kamran inaugurated the exhibition in a unique way. Instead of the conventional practice of just cutting the ribbon, a painting on canvas was made to inaugurate the exhibition.
Ijazul Hassan said that the most striking features of Maliha’s artwork was the element of ‘abandon’ that assaults her work. He said that only a few could measure up to the wilful engagement of her brush with pigments.
Mujahid Kamran said that the artist was disposed to flights of imagination, which can simultaneously have the patience to observe objective reality, which is an unusual trait. “The element of imagination infuses most of her works,” he added.
Maliha Azami Aga said that the colours she had used were mostly vibrant, which are not necessarily descriptive but range from symbolic to the evocative, and therefore conceived and perceived as autonomous values and not attributes of the image.
She said that she liked to start from the sensible phenomenon, from the model of representation, at least in the mind. “Then all hell breaks loose, for I start to reveal in the dramatic process of the pictures’ development, of its growth to a completeness that was only provisional, subject to a continual motion of formation or disintegration”.
She said that for her, the canvas is then charged with physical, mental and emotional energy – a place saturated with the quivering energy of material strokes of colour. A large number of students from the NCA and Punjab University attended the exhibition and admired the paintings.
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