In Praise of Black

A few decades ago, the great Iranian philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr delivered a lecture at the National College of Arts Lahore (NCA). In front of a packed auditorium, Nasr claimed that in the Islamic societies, shaping a spoon or forging a fork is more important than painting a fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Only because innumerable people use these pieces of cutlery, whereas a few visit Vatican City to look at the famous painting by Michelangelo. 

A similar kind of equilibrium can be maintained between works produced by an artist and a book on his/her art. Paintings, drawings, sculptures, installations, digital prints, multi-media videos, are often huge, heavy, and expensive. These cannot be owned by an ordinary person, nor are displayed at galleries, collections, residences which can easily be excessed by the general public. Many are even exhibited and stored in other countries, cities, locations, thus making it impossible for someone living in the Awan Town of Lahore, Nazimabad of Karachi, Qasim Colony of Rawalpindi, Hayatabad of Peshawar, and Hazara Town of Quetta to have a direct contact with artworks, except reproduced in books, newspapers, posters, or on social media.  

However there is still a difference between a book, and a daily paper or a social network platform. Everything appears in newspaper is lost the day after, due to the object turned into a recycled substance, often used for selling samosas, pans, or freshly baked naans, likewise a post on the Facebook, Insta, X, and other sites immediately disappears after/under the load of other content, hence forgotten. On the other hand, when you buy a book, it remains available and relevant after years, even to the next generations (usually a book survives longer than its author!).  

The recently published monograph on the art of Hamra Abbas, titled Every Colour is a Shade of Black, is one such object to stay; also a publication which in comparison to normal art books (especially from Pakistan) is manageable in its dimensions, weight, and value. Priced 9000 rupees, a paperback, and closer to an A4 paper, the volume is inviting and attractive. 

But more than these physical qualities and practical aspects, the volume is exciting, due to the names of contributors and the superb reproductions of art works to illustrate these writers’ points further. Interestingly, the subject is the same – a single artist, Hamra Abbas – but each of 10 authors commented in a different, unique and individual way. Highlighting formal aspects, cultural context, religious connections, the background of techniques, and Abbas’s concerns that are/were dealt with in work after work, but each time in a new, unusual, extraordinary manner. 

It is a sheer pleasure to read the essays penned by Hammad Nasar, Mohsin Hamid, Karen Greenwalt, Sara Raza, Jonathan Bloom, Salima Hashmi, Ainsley Cameron and a few others who hold authority on the art of the Islamic world, contemporary practices and familiar with the work of Abbas for years. As Zena Khan maps the life and career of the artist, one starts seeing her practice through her formative years at NCA and then in Berlin (where Abbas acquired her second post graduate degree from Hochschule für Kunst). In addition to her academic achievements Hamra Abbas won a number of prestigious global awards including Meisterschueler Prize, Universität der Künste Berlin (2004), Jury Prize, Sharjah Biennale 9 (2009), Abraaj Capital Art Prize Winner (2011) and the Asia Society Game Changer Award (2021).  

Jonathan Bloom, a celebrated author on Islamic art  investigates the features of Abbas’s aesthetics. Its roots in Muslim art, as well its corelation with other religious art forms, for example of Christianity. A subject that invited a number of writers (Ainsley Cameron, Sara Raza, and Kareen Greenwalt) to expound its history and its link with modern and contemporary art. Especially in reference to Kazimir Malevich’s black cube. Likewise Irfan Moeen Khan provided a wider perspective to the imagery created by Hamra Abbas, on its association with the idea of paradise in Islamic myths, beliefs, and narratives.  

The art of Hamra Abbas is multi-faceted, and cannot be contained in one interpretation, nor tamed within one tradition. Like an artist, who explores new ways of seeing and new modes of saying, Abbas has been regularly inventing, yet if seen in a retrospective, her entire body of work is – like the beads of a rosary – are joined together. In an uncanny way, all the essays written by individuals residing in the UK, the US, Malaysia, and Pakistan appear to be part of a longer and complex conversation.  

Another analogy of this complexity and unity can be found in the form of the cube, actually Ka’ba, the most sacred building for Muslims around the world. Abbas, in her seminal piece of work, Kaaba Picture as a Misprint (in the words of Jonathan Bloom) “transformed several popular images of the holy structure typically sold to pilgrims as souvenirs, into art. She manipulated her fluorescent colours to produce works reminiscent of hippie-era psychedelic images of rock stars, thereby combining sacred imagery with international consumer and popular culture.”  

Similar approaches are evident in her blend of geometry and popular fluorescent sheets, which emanate different colours/shades, eventually centred within a circle or a hexagon of luminous black. What appears in her work, from her construction in plexiglass, to her large stone sculptures, is the presence of a relentless and perfectionist mind, always searching, assimilating, transforming, inquiring and exploring. I recall an artist’s residency where she picked ordinary and available material and elevated it to higher and complex levels. In 2016, during the Canvas/Pioneer Residency in Khashab, Hamra Abbas experimented with marble and other stones found at the vastly spread site of the cement factory. In collaboration with technicians, engineers, and workers of the factory she started to produce minimal patterns, of water, waves, streams, which were later exalted to her magnificent, beautiful and much celebrated work for the Dubai Expo 2020.    

The monograph, a publication of COMO Museum of Art Lahore (where Abbas’s solo exhibition was inaugurated to coincide the LLF 2020), is a great effort to document not only the works of Hamra Abbas, but a marvellous piece of writing by Mohsin Hamid, to understand, approach and immerse in her art and mind.  

Editor 

Quddus Mirza