Amina Ansari’s work is as perilous to unpack as it is exhilarating to be experienced. It is an unnerving body of work defined by its clear, uncompromising intention, unwavering dedication, breathtaking span of patience, untold perseverance, unusual stream of self-awareness and most critically: the drive to make this art principally for herself rather than for the public display or even approval.
Amina is a survivor in more than one sense of the expression - a survivor who threw her own life upon the potter’s wheel to bring out an ongoing series of creative work of such invincible force, yet of such subtle sensitivity and overwhelming sense of celebration, that it draws you in as a rare banquet of heart, mind and soul. Like Jorge Luis Borges’ prophetic words on his own work, her heavily layered and unabashedly colourful portraits are a celebration of creative joy, forays into mythology, a study of human form moulded by time, certain twilights and certain paces - even though the faces she paints may reveal their resume of love, loss and longing - they stand out from all forms of conventional portraiture in art as they are enmeshed within endless squares of traditional textile-like motifs. Look at them carefully and you sense that they are trying to tell us something, or have told us something we should not have missed, or are about to tell us something; all within an aesthetic framework that is rooted in Amina’s own trajectory and her cultural heritage.
'Him or him' - 5ft x 6ft, oil on canvas, 2016
Her huge, vibrant canvases are strategically worked upon to create a "ralli" effect - the traditional Sindhi quilt
Yet, Amina’s own manifesto of art offers clues - as long as the eye doesn’t succumb to the manifest mush, her experiments with visual art remain stunningly original. The lingering question you are then left with is: How in the world could this work not have been produced?
It the otherwise uncalled-for rite of fire that Amina Ansari’s creative self had to cross through in order to turn her creative energy into pure gold. When hardships - both physical and relational - are fraught and fought against, as Amina did, the artist either becomes embattled and her art becomes embittered or it all becomes an arsenal: a bottomless reservoir for the artist to envision and unleash a world that aspires to heal where it hurts and find hope where bleakness bequeaths blighting sorrow.
As a British Pakistani artist, Ansari is a legatee of multiple cultural legacies and a citizen of the world. For her, art is just as much of a personal trajectory, an expedition into finding her voice in a milieu that offers prescriptive, paved paths to be followed by a young Asian woman.
The promise of her journey was evident from an early age. At a tender age, one day at Kingsbury High School in London, her teacher approached her and said she would not be able to participate the group and that she should work on her own. The young Amina spoke up: “Sir, may I speak? Who are you to assume anything about my capabilities in class? Have you ever stopped to think, to even ask first, before you make up your mind?” This question posed decades back on a chilly London morning, continues to even now beckon the recipients of her art, to question any preconceived notions with which we may approach her work.
And this question is critical given that Amina’s work is a tribute to capturing not just the moment, but the memory that lies beneath the iceberg. Experiencing her work is to engage with it as a vehicle leading the eye and the mind to a set of memories. For example her portraiture of Abdul Sattar Edhi engages you on several levels in person, and establishes a memory that challenges you and then makes you think about it days, weeks, months and years later. It is timeless.
It will assume a new relevance to each generation, and to the age in which it is viewed. This is the kind of work that connects itself with the past, digs its heels deep in the here-and-now and feeds into the future. The rigorous beauty of Amina’s huge, vibrant canvases that are strategically worked upon to create a “ralli” effect - the traditional Sindhi quilt stitched together by countless vibrantly coloured tiny pieces of fabric - commands your gaze and thoughts whenever you look at it. It is like a solid relationship that fills the gaps within, something that lasts forever and grows with time.
Amina ponderingly recalls with her signature long mysterious smile when a teacher at the National College of Arts, Lahore, yelled at her to make her point more compelling. Amina remembers responding with a calm countenance: “All I can hear is the volume of your voice - a loudness that goes towards the wall and bounces off. Where is the actual message that you’re trying to convey?” The teacher, taken aback, apologised and thus began a more understanding and cordial relationship between the two where, like Amina puts it herself, “she changed me and I changed her”.
Amina's foray into the world of fashion - she designed a jacket for Rang Ja
Amina's work remains parsimonious, despite its complexity and style
This is the kind of unflinching inner reservoir with which Amina grew up as a child with partial hearing impairment and as a young adult she preserved her sanity while in a violently turbulent and ultimately doomed marriage. Amina was able to un-ensnare herself from that ‘invalidating, brutal relationship’, only to find her former spouse actually arrested and sentenced for abetting a violent crime. The scars of her survival of those savage days may be stubbornly static but she has moved on, soared higher and turned suffering into a kind of enabling strength.
She admits that people around her would think that she could not survive. She nonetheless, took the challenges in her stride and stood up for herself on a ground that she levelled for herself. “All that I really wanted was someone to ask me what I wanted for a change. And gradually, those who matter most in my life began to do that.”
Amina drew from her resilience to hone tools for survival not just for herself but for others who like her were voyaging through tempestuous currents. She began to work with refugees coming from war-torn, conflict regions. She dedicated time and effort in helping to rebuild lives and catalyse displaced populations picking up the pieces of their shattered lives - just as she did for herself - and start over again.
She would best describe her life as 'spooky'
As a Communication Director for a UK-based charity working with and for refugees, Amina drew on her knowledge of suffering, survival and art to reach out to individuals who found themselves on historical fault lines and their lives viciously infringed upon by political fissures.
Living in Pakistan for the past few years, Amina believes that there is more room for humour in Pakistan than in London. Humour is an important aspect of her life and she arms herself with it wherever she goes. The lack of order in Pakistan, she feels, has worked to her advantage. Her free spiritedness and spontaneity makes it easier for her to navigate the pace and culture of Lahore. Yet, having lived in London most of her life, she is used to people working in order to survive.
“In London I often ask for mango lassi and when you ask for it in Pakistan, there’s a whole mockery to the question. One realises the lack of awareness when bringing Pakistan to UK,” Amina laughs at this relativity swinging from the profane to the sublime and then the absurd. Freelancing in the fashion industry in Pakistan, she managed to transfer her art into jackets at Rang Ja stores.
NCA Residency Program Exhibition in 2015 - mannequins, mixed media and oils on canvas, 7 ft x 8 ft
Amina Ansari’s life is surrounded by vibrancy of colours. “Initially, my art was entirely unpredictable and the end result always tends to surprise me. But with time I have begun to recognise my own motives more clearly, without compromising the spontaneity of my work,” Amina says. Colours, shades and hues, she believes, are a lifestyle for her.
“Art is a part of my life, so it only makes sense for me to integrate the two,” she chuckles. Since Amina admits that she cannot perceive colours such as black or brown, so she chooses to go back to the basics and paint with vibrant colours. Ansari adds, “In a world of superficiality, I prefer to go back to the basics with primary colours.”
With a black belt in martial arts, Amina leveraged upon her learning to hone her sensibilities through study, meditation and reflection, resisting to forever “go with the flow” from the “tastemakers.” In this respect, Amina’s work remains parsimonious, despite its complexity and style. Each element that constitutes the whole in her work must be essential and every aspect of it - the scale, the composition, the content and all that is communicated by it - is invariably intrinsic to it. The result, hence, is one of an enchanting aesthetic feat regardless of its appearance, just as there is beauty in irrefutable scientific evidence.
'Marilyn' - oil on canvas, 40 inches x 40 inches, 2015
Amongst her mentors, Amina’s mother Durdana Ansari continues to be a key factor in the way her life has shaped up. It was she who handed Amina her first paintbrush, which she recalls throwing against the wall in a fit of rejection.
Ansari remembers herself being an extremely complex and challenging child. However, her mother’s discerning eye found a rather slick solution for the release of her angst - and for it to be replaced by a sense of proportion and an ability to retrospect. She encouraged Amina to join martial arts classes that would help her look in the challenges confronting her in they eye rather than shying away from them.
“This was my first exploration into attempting to make full use of my senses and listen more to my intuition,” Amina smiles. Curiously, one might wonder if it was her training in the martial arts - that lasted years and shaped her personality - that has something to do with her lashing out in her paintings. She prefers oil paint, without linseed or turpentine oil as a medium of choice, since she does not have to be scrupulous with it. Using thick paint brushes, knives and even her own finger nails, Amina Ansari literally carves out her portraiture upon the canvas.
In many ways Amina, says, she feels connected to artist Pakistani artist Gulgee, who had a very similar artistic style and energetic colour palette. Ansari shares that Gulgee, a family friend, once told her mother that her daughter was gifted and that she had the right “germs” within her, essential to become an artist. Ansari asserts that she remains greatly influenced by people who have shown faith in her and her work. The literary maestro Intizar Hussain was one of them. “Intizar sahib, who understood me like not many do, called me his ‘daughter’. And that came in handy when I paid my humble tribute to him by painting him, trying to depict his personality and soul through the colours,” Amina reminisces.
Ansari best describes her life as “spooky”. She could not fathom where her life was headed when she was younger but with the passage of time, she now knows enough to make sense of all the seemingly disconnected dots. She believes that qismet or fate has a big part in her life.
Amina laughs as she describes herself as a juggernaut of paradoxes. She calls herself ‘a robot’ while empathising with people around her. She readily admits that she lacks patience with those who go through their lives without “logic or sense”. She says that she empathises with people who keep going in circles without looking for a solution for their problems on a daily basis; yet she can’t help wondering if they had tried, or at least tried enough to draw strength from within to steer their lives themselves. “When you are born with hardships, you don’t realise what hardship means as you get older and look around you at the circus of events.”
“People ask me why I don’t express myself verbally. They don’t realise that I have seen the world and I am content.” This may be a feat in itself. She has seen other people suffer and she feels a certain kinship to those who have suffered and healed themselves.
Talking about her art bringing her a sense of immense joy and pride, she recalls that she wasn’t particularly ‘passionate’ about art initially, but with time, joy and pride is overlaid by pure passion.
Her work was shown at Windsor Castle as part of the collection to mark Queen Elizabeth’s accession to the throne. Her work is also displayed in the Brick Lane Gallery.
She is intrigued yet detached about how people view her as a person. This is evident in one of her self-portraits, ‘Marilyn’. She says that some people may mock her while others may perceive her to be “a woman deeply immersed in mysticism.”
Going back to her portrait of Edhi, perhaps one of her most enigmatic yet the most controversial pieces, titled “Him or him?” depicts Edhi and a colourful stealthy silhouette of Osama bin Laden - or as she calls him, Mr. O. It is an amalgamation of “negative and positive”. She explains that she wanted to see how people would interpret the men in the painting. The results are stranger than she expected: “People from the west recognise Osama bin Laden in an instant while in Pakistan, Edhi is the more recognisable one.” She shares that sometimes people are even reluctant to mention Osama bin Laden’s name. Her desire to paint someone without a face was caused by her belief that life is full of labels and she wanted to combat that. She wanted this opportunity to observe how people interpret things when they are presented without labels or clear directions.
Amina reminisces about her unique encounter with Edhi. Once again, she calls it “qismet” that she met him. She noticed that his eyes were full of pain, some of which she could relate to. Ansari narrates that the relationship “was achieved without words” and it stayed in her heart. Years later when she found out that the man was nominated for Nobel Peace Prize, she decided to paint his portrait.
Amina Ansari’s life is entwined into her dreams for a better world and her audacity to dream further. She dreams of setting up an open an art institute for the poor in the near future.
She believes that its crucial that adults and children have access to the world of the arts. She does not believe in closing oneself off from the world and her life and work is testament to that. She may be a ‘robot’ or a spiritual being - she chooses to believe she is both.
Towards the end of a long summer afternoon, speaking to this amazing artist and individual, she and I walk through her painted canvases. What one finds spread before one’s eyes is an effective combination of concept, vision and skilled mastery of various mediums. Like all serious art, the core quality of Amina’s art lies not in the message but in the way it is conveyed.
Salman Asif is an art historian based in London and Islamabad
