Bushra Waqas Khan’s solo exhibition, The Radiant Star, has an opening event scheduled at Canvas Gallery on January 7, 2025. Both visually arre
Bushra Waqas Khan’s solo exhibition, The Radiant Star, has an opening event scheduled at Canvas Gallery on January 7, 2025.
Both visually arresting and symbolically challenging, this work has many layers and complex origins. Its starting point is particularly curious: the star found on the Pakistan Oath’s paper. This detail, which appears banal at first glance, contains multitudes of identity, credibility, and official meaning. Khan’s reinterpretation of this star transcends it from a mark of bureaucracy into an emblem of light and change; one that possesses far-reaching implications. Such an interpretation beckons contemplation in a profound sense.
Khan is a graduate of the National College of Arts (NCA) Lahore and has bespoke herself a space in contemporary art within her niche since 2008. This work meticulously reconstructs the complex designs of state’s documents, particularly the aura or oath’s papers. These state documents, which encapsulate notions of legal possession as well as several other patriarchal symbols, have inspired her art of critique focused on systemic exclusion. Through the repetition of the designs and subsequent innovative alteration, he transforms them into compelling and complex works of art in both two and three dimensions.
The Radiant Star reflects the complexities between identity and power, the outer and the functional. It calls into question viewers to reconsider the symbolic weight of everyday objects and their roles in shaping identity and authority.
The exhibition remained on view until January 16th, 2025. The show was an opportunity to experience Khan’s evocative exploration of power, form, and transformation.
