Hamra Abbas was born in Kuwait in 1976, lives and works in Pakistan. She was trained initially in sculpture and miniature painting at Lahore's National College of Arts and was an assistant lecturer in Universität der Künste, Berlin and a visiting faculty member in National College of Arts, Lahore. She now works in a variety of media, including video, installation and sculpture, and her peripatetic artistic practice resists easy labelling. She mixes the old with the new, the culturally specific with the universal. Hamra Abbas’ work explores ideas of cultural ownership and alienation, and the creative and destructive energies of love and war. Her recent exhibitions include “Beyond the Page”, Contemporary Art from Pakistan, Manchester Art Gallery (England, 2006); “Artist Migration”, Berlin-Dellbrügge & De Moll, Heidelberger Kunstverein (Germany, 2006); Biennale of Sydney 2006; “Zeitsprünge, Raumfolgen”, ifa-Galerie Berlin (2005); “Meisterschülerpreis des Präsidenten der UdK Berlin”, Galerie Michael Schultz OHG (Berlin, 2005); 5. Ceintje Biennale, National Museum of Montenegro (2004).
Lines of Lessons
There are many lessons, which can be learnt from “Lessons of Love” by Hamra Abbas. First and foremost that in each amorous relationship, no matter how smooth, content and pleasurable it is, there lays a dormant element of danger: of breakup, destruction and violence. Hamra probes that possibility in her large scale works, created from the Indian miniature paintings on the theme of love. Abbas accentuates lances, swords and other weapons in the traditional imagery that consists of two figures in the act of love making.
The presence of arms, in the bodies during intimate position, reflects the other side of love as well as it denotes the present situation of our world, in which not only love, but every sentiment and activity is threatened through terror.
With their embodied meanings, the sculptures of Hamra Abbas are a continuity of historic genre of miniature painting, yet she introduces another aspect -the urban consumerist aesthetics- by rendering the bodies of lovers like the cheap plastic dolls in gaudy hues. Hence in her work, if on the one hand the conventional miniature painting is converted (probably for the first time) into the art of sculpture, at the same instance the tradition is coupled with the popular culture -through the forms of these copulating figures.
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