“Colour is like new music. It is a deaf man’s music.”
So true are these phrases of Nazia Ejaz on viewing any of her paintings. Nazia Ejaz, a single of Pakistan’s top, most critical artists, makes songs and writes epics with her art. Her paintings are spellbinding. Magic is in her colours and imagery that will come with its own tale, resplendent with a theme, plot, subplots, complexity, and an just about palpable sense of staying in appreciate with the generation of that story.
Fascination for art is not some thing unusual for Nazia, the youngest daughter of 1 of the subcontinent’s most legendary and most celebrated singers, Madam Noor Jehan, and Ejaz Durrani, a person of Pakistan’s a lot-liked cinema stars, and a director and a producer from 1950s to 1980s.
BFA from Lahore’s National Faculty of Artwork, and master’s degrees in visible arts from Slade University of Art, UCL, and Visible Artwork and Artistic Practice from College of South Australia, Nazia analyzed Indian Art background with SOAS and Sotheby’s Institute, London. Her love for artwork is lifelong, vividly illustrated in each and every move of her everyday living. Obtaining labored as a printmaker, painter, and instructor in the United kingdom, Australia, and Pakistan, Nazia, mom of two, is at this time living and functioning in Karachi.
Nazia’s body of work—constant, spectacular, evolving—spans around a long time, 1992-2022 and continuing, with solo and team exhibitions at some of the primary artwork galleries in Pakistan, Australia, and the Uk.
“Scriptures of Love”, demonstrated at Canvas Gallery, Karachi, on November 16-25, 2021, is a spectacular screen of the assortment and the depth of Nazia’s operate, masterfully elaborated in the evaluation of Quddus Mirza, a renowned Pakistani artist, art critic and artwork educator: “One is unable to make your mind up or determine involving the seductive and the spiritual whilst in front of Nazia Ejaz’s surfaces… [who] in her functions would seem to be exploring japanese philosophy, aspects of religion and the essence of Sufism. Ejaz ways these ideas by the language of an graphic-maker: a particular person who interprets and transforms thoughts into designs, sorts, and colours, hence expanding their effect, being familiar with and splendor.
Nazia Ejaz and her featured paintings
Impression Credit history: Supplied
Nazia’s collection of paintings “Love Letters” was a attractive tribute to her mother, Madam Noor Jehan, whose tunes are eternal odes to poetry and melody
Image Credit rating: Supplied
Nazia’s sequence of paintings “Love Letters” was a beautiful tribute to her mom, Madam Noor Jehan, whose music are eternal odes to poetry and melody
Impression Credit score: Supplied
Nazia Ejaz attracts her inspiration from the Renaissance, but as a substitute of replicating the earlier imagery, she invests in the brilliance of color when manufacturing paintings of almost abstract character. Ejaz strives to compose her colours like notations of great songs.
The melody of her art does not rely on parental references, nor on her readings on Islamic philosophy, but on an amalgamation of the earlier and the present, of East and West. It is cold pressed to the extent that what we get eventually is the purity of paint, and the satisfaction of pushing boundaries of all kinds. Ejaz, for her portion, refrains from any this kind of, immediate interpretation, because her work has the possible of becoming considered through various, numerous perspectives.”
In 2019, Nazia’s collection of paintings “Love Letters” was a stunning tribute to her mother, Madam Noor Jehan, whose tracks are everlasting odes to poetry and melody: “When I was at university in London in the 90s, I would get a letter from my mom, Noor Jehan, superbly penned in Urdu. As I sat reading through in the corridor exterior the Printmaking Department at the Slade School of Good Art, my mates, passing by, would marvel at the beautiful script and asked for translations. They referred to as them my appreciate letters, and they were—full of emotion and prayers and longing.
There is a good deal that 1 can say about Noor Jehan. At periods, it is her tunes that inspire, sometimes her photographs, and at other instances, her phrases. She was a baby protégé, a movie star and singer par excellence, a model icon, a patriot, a buddy, a mimic, and a mystic, as nicely as a one mother with a incredibly potent work ethic and a feeling of integrity. She worked in a male dominated business and acquired the respect of her peers and general public at massive. With each and every period of her existence, she seemed to have reinvented herself. She was melodramatic and unreasonable, heat, and generous. For me she was usually a image of feminine empowerment.
With this body of perform, I have tried using to express a thing of my sense of her, some glimpses of my time with NJ. It is my enjoy letter to the girl who has been the one most influential figure at each and every juncture of my existence and get the job done.”
Nazia, talking to me about her perform, said: “Since 2015, the notion, metaphor and the physicality of ‘jaali’ has been the main backdrop of my do the job. All the do the job I have finished due to the fact 2015 is unique offshoots of this idea. It controls the room and the see of the outdoors and the see of the within. It demarcates, protects, and alters the look at of inside and exterior.”
For Gulf News, I asked Nazia Ejaz a number of questions:
Mehr Tarar: What evokes you in your day-to-working day lifetime? Who are your finest creative inspirations?
Nazia Ejaz: Art is a translation of life as a result of the medium of the artist. How an person perceives and relates to the surroundings and to people has normally intrigued me. The strategy of link and separation due to gender, race, or a social bias. My practice is an observation of lifetime through my very own experience. It is a contemplation of things that increase and magnify the working experience of being alive. It is interwoven with my individual journey of self-consciousness and self-actualisation. Occasionally the ideas are much far more produced than the get the job done, but at other periods, the do the job travels in advance of the understanding. It is incredibly exciting for me at that point to see in which it will guide me, what it will reveal.
Audio has normally influenced me. For me it is 1 of the strongest artwork sorts in that it is equipped to transcend all barriers of details of separation and has a visceral result on human beings. Colour, like music, is capable to evoke an psychological reaction no matter of identification or language. I have been functioning with significant scale color canvases with a life time of text woven into them. The method of earning, in this scenario, by itself gets to be a monitor of introspection and contemplation in research of consciousness and cognisance. It is a way of life, a way of wanting and processing the earth around me, fairly than a thing I do.
Claude Cahun reported in 1930: “Then, break the glass panes … with the fragments, compose a stained glass.” I am extremely aware of the fact that I am standing on the shoulders of giants. All fantastic artists that have long gone just before and remaining their do the job for us to master from and to develop on. There are also a lot of to name. And not just artists. Actors, musicians, writers, movie makers, poets. All artists whose operate has moved me are my mentors, and lifestyle my inspiration.
What is missing from the art earth as it exists currently? How do you see that void becoming loaded?
All kinds of artwork and artists have existed normally. ‘The artwork world’ that you are referring to, mainstream artwork, is a type of highlight that highlights a specified type of art kind, or a selected sort of artist, based on what fits the agenda and interests of the time. And this target keeps shifting. It moves from paintings to sculpture to installation to performance artwork and back once more. But whether or not the highlight is on it or not, all types of arts and artists exist and converse and lead. The art environment is not a static detail. It is a moving, altering organism with as several targets as there are people associated in it. As an artist my concentrate is on my work. I believe that if the function is robust and genuine, almost nothing else issues. It speaks for itself.
How do you see your self and your art evolving around the upcoming five many years? Following 10 yrs?
It grows as I stay and find out. It evolves with every single encounter I experience. I think it is a privilege to be a practising artist. My observe is not only a way of communication for me but a supply of mastering and appreciation of lifestyle. It enables me to change my focus inwards and to study my ideas about existence and perception of other folks. I am fired up to see where by the operate prospects me.
What suggestions, if any, would you give to youthful female artists hunting for their voice?
In the terms of the art critic Jerry Saltz “If you just get to work and share what you are really pondering with other folks in your personal voice, and you become as radical, as susceptible as the work, you are hunting at a daily life lived in Art.” This is a sound guidance for any artist, male or female.
