Farida Batool is now a widely known contemporary Pakistani visual artist. Batool’s work is a commentary on social changes around her and on life as a woman. She depicts this through documenting her surroundings in layers of photographs. Batool’s work is strengthened by her equal zeal for teaching design and cultural studies and to find meaning in popular cultural symbols. She is a faculty member of National College of Arts, Lahore. As a result Batool’s work stands on strong conceptual footing and is not a mere exercise in aesthetics or superficiality.
Her medium of expression is lenticular. To put it simply, lenticular involves many layers of photo prints put on one another. The lenticular lens on top of photo prints acts like a prism to create optical illusion. It shows a different dimension of the picture to the viewer depending upon their vantage point.
'Kahani Eik Shehr Ki'
One of the few artists using lenticular, it is an apt medium for Batool. Her whose work has a certain sense of a child’s innocence and that is not surprising: as children we have all been fascinated by lenticular postcards of various building, cities and characters - almost bringing those subjects to animated life.
Batool’s work is mostly inspired from her hometown Lahore, which because of rapid urbanisation has undergone immense changes. Many of the quieter neighbourhoods have transformed into crowded and congested commercial centers like Gulberg’s MM Alam Road – a place where Batool spent her childhood. Transient social norms, violence and terrorism have affected the carefree Lahori lifestyle. Batool documents these changes by digging into the family photograph chest, taking long walks in the city or photographing post-violence scenes.
A viewer of Batool’s work cannot possibly miss these societal changes. She expresses these changes sometimes gently, like a depiction of extremist wall-chalking in her work Kahani Eik Shehr Ki, or through forceful expression such as lipstick-covered shattered glass photographs after an angry crowd ransacked shops on the Mall, titled Love letter to Lahore.
In Batool's lenticular works, the 'earlier' image is partially erased but also constitutive of the 'later' image - in order to portray contrasting realities
Her undergraduate thesis in 1993, a ceramic tile mural, explored her relationship with the environment around her. It still adorns the exterior wall of a building designed by Nayyer Ali Dada in NCA: a smart move by a student to find a permanent place for her work in her prestigious alma mater. It was an experiment – and Batool’s capacity to experiment has led her to work in many a different medium and come up with numerous different ideas.
From our NCA days, I recall her as a politically and socially aware person – due at least in part to the exposure provided by her distinguished father Afzal Haider. He most certainly believed in fully empowering his daughter. I still remember when a Batool full of excitement shared with us that she was now ‘documented’ in her Family Shajra (Tree) for posterity as the first female: a document that traditionally only mentions the male members of a family. That sense of empowerment is seen throughout her work.
'Qadam Qadam Azad'
One of Batool’s works that I particularly like is a black and white lenticular “Qadam Qadam Azad” from Batool’s childhood house on Lahore’s M. M. Alam Road. A multinational fast food chain stands there now. The lenticular shows a Lahore summer with Batool and her other cousins making the best use of a big fountain in the front lawn by taking a dip. These fountains were a signature decorative feature of many of the bigger urban homes in the 1960s and 1970s. The image is juxtaposed with bare structural steel bars exactly documenting where the structure of the fast food outlet now stands in the front lawn of Batool’s childhood house. It powerfully captures the proximity of innocence and harsh realities.
Another of her works, “Kahani Eik shehr Ki”, is a long scroll of her walks along different roads of Lahore. It is a part of the Singapore Museum collection and is a rich commentary on the urban and architectural language of Lahore, besides reflecting social changes. The real passersby and traffic become the characters telling stories and Batool is like an innocent child walking through the city’s maze.
When asked why she uses lenticular, Batool responds that the layered images of lenticular are often related through the notion of memory or history, with the ‘earlier’ image being partially erased but also constitutive of the ‘later’ image in order to portray contrasting realities. The images can be played through a satire-like techniques, which can be achieved through playful viewing acts. Thus an optical illusion of movement is created on a two-dimensional photographic surface. The total effect of the movement created by optical illusion work is difficult to document or capture on a still photographic format.
Batool recently did an installation of soccer balls with human skin imprinted on them, communicating how violence has turned some of the most joyful acts of human beings – like sporting activities – into acts of violence.
Not surprisingly Batool’s work has a strong presence of woman as protagonist – either in the form of herself in Shehr Ki Kahani or a girl skipping ropes in Nai Rysaan Shehr Lahore Diaan. Her work, of course, reflects some of Batool’s own struggles as a woman. Despite the strong family support, she had had her share of struggles – as an independent person, an independent young mother pursuing higher studies abroad for several years, an individual committed to connecting art to the masses through her Awami Art Project and in establishing herself as a recognised visual artist. There is much more to come from Farida’s world, both from the visual artist and from the academic.
The writer can be contacted at smt2104@columbia.edu
