A man extends his hand out of his car window, and hands over his identity card to the security personnel on watch accompanied by two other soldiers, alert with their guns and eyes fixed ahead. But his identity is not just the small piece of stiff paper, it is spread to the woman seated next to him in hijab, the kid at the back, his Suzuki car and his surroundings crowded with barriers of different kinds. The entire scenario, painted by Saba Khan (The Check-post), suggests an ordinary person presently living in Pakistan, witnessing and experiencing the aftermath and impact of religious zeal in the immediate environment.
If the increase in religious sentiments has resulted in a growing number of females adopting purdah and males sporting beards, or posters of spiritual gatherings put up everywhere (shops, back of rickshaws, buses, vans), at the same time this fervour is manifested in the propagation of jihadist outfits: ISIS militants, Taliban terrorists and suicide bombers from various sectarian organisations. All have affected and altered our society, with barricades, check-posts, barbed wires and boundary walls (perpetually rising) becoming part of our urban landscape. Walk through the gates at the entrance of any building - surveillance cameras in offices, universities, restaurants and other public places and random body searches are now the new realities of our existence (or lack thereof).
'Cake Dreams'
Her scepticism is on the verge of subversive
This, the reality of today, is realised in the art of Saba Khan. Paintings at her recent solo exhibition ‘How Not To Be Small And Silent’ become the chronicle of our times. In her work she draws upon references from popular culture: hoardings for cosmetics, decorations of wedding functions, public fountains, official plaques, fast food and truck painting. A preoccupation with faith, fondness for food and desire for decorativeness are three components of our culture that Khan addresses in her art. On the surface these may appear different, disjointed and separate, but in reality they are connected with each other. A society that encourages individuals to devour barbequed meat cuisine at a manic rate is the same that breeds boys who behead their enemies in the name of faith. Or a culture that thrives on showing off its wealth (in the form of exuberant domestic settings), and on demonstrating its piety (through beards and burqas).
Recognising this element in our current situation, Saba Khan depicts it, but her comment and critique encompass a lighter side too. The portrayal of a security man sporting a beard, a woman in headscarf, a halal meat dish, the facade of a big building, a public fountain, a government plaque, an advertisement for whitening cream and portions of fast food had a naïve almost caricature-like quality. The artist’s decision to incorporate humour in her work (despite the fact that she is a highly skilful painter and has demonstrated her command in rendering her subject in a naturalistic manner) is important because “Laughter is the vigorous expression of our scepticism, our refusal to believe that everything is harmoniously conceived”, as Howard Jacobson points out.
'Big Halal dreams'
Her scepticism is on the verge of subversive, since she dismantles the edifice of our societal practices and official truths. In ‘Big Halal Dreams’ freshly sliced and packed portions of chicken are surrounded with prayer beads, superimposed by the text ‘halal dreams’ in English script, and in Inauguration Plaque a large plaque made of pink marble between the patches of green grass and blue sky with sparse clouds, instead of bearing the names of national martyrs or details of a civic project/road sign, has a social media message (“hi, do you want to friend with me”) inscribed in Urdu alphabets. Or the scene of a security check in The Check-post - rendered in loosely applied brush strokes and simplified lines – resembles a children’s school book, a primer, especially with the line, “Father, please give the kind man your I.D. card” under the heading ‘Father’.
The artist’s approach to question and critique a culture that survives on the consumption of faith as well as of commodities is evident through her works in which a baroque building has words prising God painted on the façade; a meat dish is presented as if a prized item; a burger and ketchup are lit; faces loose their dark complexion in four steps; fountains are erected in public places. Her works are features of an environment where faith becomes a commodity and products turn into sacred items.
'Failure of the fairness cream'
Along with her social concerns, the language of Saba Khan also relates to her subject. If the imagery stems from the vernacular expressions, her choice to address these is also connected to popular idiom. Saba Khan consciously selected a diction that illustrates how a larger population converses and shares its ideas. In Cake Dreams, she reproduces the scene of an ideal sunset from the truck art of Pakistan, in which trees, rocks, water, boat and a duck with its shadow on the ground are immaculately painted. In the middle of this canvas is a large cake made of beads. The blend of typical scenery found in our surroundings (and appreciated by poor people, probably since the colonial period) and the cake admired by the middle-classes is a way of conveying how the two sub-cultures (in times and social groups) merge and meet.
Through her choice of materials, the artist forms an idiom that presents this combination as she uses beads, crystals, sequins and LED lights that are favoured by the general public to adorn their artefacts and decorate their neighbourhoods. Saba Khan’s sophisticated usage of these substances confirms her painting ability. More so because in one work, she deliberately decides to mix different styles (or ‘accents’) to communicate her content. For example in ‘Big Halal Dreams’ the skin of meat pieces is painted in an incredibly convincing method, almost replicating the actual, whereas the prayer beads are treated in stylised manner and roses on four sides remind one of patterns on embroidery (even though these are executed in beads).
Installation by Saba Khan
'Inauguration plaque'
Saba Khan's approach is to question and critique a culture that survives on the consumption of faith as well as of commodities
Actually the diversity of these dictions does not appear unusual because she manages to create a unifying link between all these. For instance the flickering LED lights in ‘Raindrops in a Pothole’ looks harmonious with the layers and lines of beads to fill four large faces in the ‘Failure of Whitening Cream’, because if in the former, lines and points are lit one after other (due to a mechanical device) our eyes experience the same sensation - seeing one portion bright in comparison to the rest as we move in front of a large surface in the latter canvas.
The work of Saba Khan reflects how an artist not only concentrates on the language of popular culture, but addresses issues that are linked to political, economical, religious and aesthetic spheres - which are all intertwined. Saba Khan has been incorporating segments of popular sensibility (cake, lavish interiors, posh but kitsch houses etc.) in her previous works but the painter’s relatively recent visit to Bahria Town (that edifice of postmodernity and bad taste) may have been pivotal to recognise her subject and realise her reality in a new way. To the extent that the entire design of display - with walls treated like marble tiles and plastic plants placed at different corners - became an extension of her content and her concept. It seems this meta-reality is important to the painter for reasons as pointed out by Spanish writer Enrique Villa-Matas: “All I ask and demand of a painter is that he should have a direct relationship with what he captures on canvas, free from all possible error, a real relationship, even if that reality has no life or form beyond the painting itself.”
