The Glowing Embers Within

Satrang Gallery’s fourth year of operation was ushered in this March with a thought-provoking exhibition, ‘The Glowing Embers Within.’ Artists Sarah Hashmi and Dua Abbas Rizvi showcased work that spoke to the innermost beliefs and convictions of their subjects. Starkly different in execution, both artists find places of commonality in their focus on the hope and confidence that faith can bestow.

Hashmi’s work is quite bleak. Dark canvases with looming cityscapes are punctuated by color that lights up the central figures. The contrast of light and dark helps us to identify that the brightness of faith is what illuminates these figures, whether they be the children of Trip to the Garden or the cloth of the faceless figure in Our Street. While her images may come across at first as quite morose, we can see in That Which Has No Existence Enters Where There is No Crevice that Hashmi has endeavored to depict the staunchness that faith gives to the faithful even in the darkest of circumstances. These are in fact paintings of the everyday miracles, everyday blessings and wonders that fill up dark spaces with light; they are the songs and sonnets of daily life that sustain hope.

In contrast, Rizvi has used not the everyday but the legendary and larger-than-life to portray her interpretation of belief, hope and faith. Using the symbols and motifs of legends and epic tales, Rizvi has focused her work on the figure of the heroine. With subjects mostly veiled and in the garb of ancient times, her images hark back to an era long gone; the Greco-Roman statues that feature in many of her pastel images serve to further enhance this. However these are no damsels in distress; these are strong female figures, with wisdom and understanding in their eyes. And while the overt symbolism of the work may link to legends and stories, the overall feeling of this collection is that it is a continuation of an ancient tradition celebrating the Sacred Feminine. From the Venus of Willendorf through to the Virgin Mother the commemoration of the feminine in religion and in spiritual beliefs has a long tradition in art and it seems to weave itself into Rizvi’s work, whether intentionally or serendipitously.

Both artists have tackled a similar theme in very different artistic ways. Rizvi’s work is more alluring, while Hashmi’s confronts, but both show different aspects of the strength that faith bestows. From the unflinching gaze of Rizvi’s Edge of the Woods to the wooden faces in Hashmi’s That Which Has No Existence Enters Where There is No Crevice the viewer is given glimpses of the potency of faith. The different manifestations of hope and faith that this exhibition reveals helps the viewer to examine and identify their own relationship with faith and belief, to think upon how the glowing embers within each of us can bring about the same sense of hope and certainty both Rizvi and Hashmi have endeavored to portray in their art.

‘The Glowing Embers Within’ was held at Satrang Gallery, Islamabad, in March 2015.

Cosima Brand is an editor and writer living in Pakistan.