Baby, you’re a Metaphor

Creating new career possibilities and giving visibility to the young talent’s unparalleled work as well as provide experience, opportunities and real-world exposure, O art space has come up with yet another prodigious solo show of one of the adroit artists of Pakistan, Rabia Farooqi. “ Baby, you’re a metaphor” took place on September 28^th ,2018 , which implied a correlation to find the hidden meaning of the characters actions and object specification by sharpening the imaginations to comprehend what is being communicated.

A Karachi based visual artist showcases the second solo show of her career at O art space gallery. She is a graduate of the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi, majored in Miniature painting and has grown her recognition by participating in multiple exhibitions nationally and internationally.

Farooqi skilfully deploys the technique of Gouache with its great antiquity and by applying it with the typical but simple tone of opaque colour, her artworks are generated with great panache. Background patterns in many artworks are designed comprehensibly with the use of skin coloured tones and shaping it in the way people conceptualise the self, think about happiness, and cope with difficulties and upheavals in life.

According to William Shakespeare “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players, they have their exits and their entrance and one man in his time play many parts”. Likewise, Farooqi’s characters in her paintings seem shapely rising and falling with symphonic gesturing and juxtapositions of colours which tremendously show the emotional and broody evocation of the elements used in every piece of art.

Characters rendered with void spaces in her paintings show a mode of emptiness in terms of conflicting wishes, prohibitions, compromises and gratification and allows colour to clarify its meaning, something we usually experience about our true identity and the reality of the world outside through abstract situation or events  These characters expressions displayed the manifestation of an inner state of human life which are totally based on the experience of expressing one’s emotions by focusing on the inadequacy and shortfall of certain behaviours and social issues which result from them in such a way that they become absurd, even hilarious.  Therefore, it becomes entertaining and reaches a wide audience who can extract multiple meanings from the state of being. All works feel for sure as if they belonged to our world, to the world of our current concerns.

The artworks with unembellished golden and white frames hold thespian descriptions of the situation intended to attract attention and their satirical titles like, ‘breakfast in bed’, ‘forced intervention’, ‘friendly competition’ and so on can easily be identified with its underlying conflicts. Her work portrayed the social-oriented view of self which emphasizes the relatedness, fluidity, morality, self-constraint, harmony, and sensitivity as well as the individual oriented view of the self which include independence, self-determination, consistency and personal striving.

By combining the symbolic images and shapes of people and their relationships with object and nature, the artist stirs the traditional and modern implementation of the thoughts and feelings seems worthwhile to viewers. The work aimed at heart and soul as well as the intellect to make the situation challenging to its viewers. The show will continue till October 08, 2018 and the promising work of Rabia Farooqui will definitely leave a mark on ones mind and soul.