‘Left Behind’ implies the ‘impermanence’ of things, that belong to a bygone era and the desire to revive them.

Two artists explore the pieces of our lives and distance and travel.

KARACHI, Aug 24: An exhibition of artworks by 12 artists — Mohsin Shafi, Nida Bangash, Mizna Zulfikar, Saamia Ahmed, Shajia Azam, Rabiya Asim, Irfan Gul Dahri, Imrana Tanveer, Maria Khan, Sarah Ahmed, Saadia Hussain and Amra Khan — opens at the VM Art Gallery at 5pm on Saturday.

Dua Abbas Rizvi was struck by the boldly personal sensibilities of Maryam Rahman and Nida Bangash, two women artists whose latest work is displayed in Lahore

The ANU School of Art and the ACT Government present the 2012 public Art Forum series. Nida Bangash is a Visiting Artist in the Painting Workshop. Based in P…

View Nida Bangash’s professional profile on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the world’s largest business network, helping professionals like Nida Bangash discover inside connections to recommended job candidates, industry experts, and business partners.

Review: NewWorks by Maryam Rahman Agha and Nida Bangash

by Madyha Leghari in ArtNow

Project abstract:

“Painting offers artists a chance to subtly segue between fact and fiction, to layer each work with the time it takes to complete it, to retain a sense of fluidity while working so sections can rise and fall in importance.”          

                                                                                 Luk Tuymans

A photograph is a moment; a split second captured with a click and the ‘beauty’ of it is that it never changes. Looking at these generic portraits as a departure point I translated this ‘beauty’ into ironic reality of loss, impermanence, erasure and human absence substituted by patterns. This metamorphic conversion of human form is just a subtle reminder of rediscovering the obvious.

Drawing my inspiration from family and studio photographs this body of work investigates the horror of reality; the erasure of human sentiments.

A series of generic “Doll like” portraits supporting adult expressions and confrontational attitude have been visualized in the form of passport size “attested” photographs. They not only provide a common ground of identity, it reduces the element of nostalgia attached to photographs in turn dealing with the irony of reducing the sanctity of humanity down to numbers.

The eyes look up at the viewer with what seems to be an expressionless, strong gaze, almost, as if posing a question to the viewer. The wide-eyed faces indicate the contradiction between the ‘doll-like’ and the narrative that is being built with patterns. The portraits trigger a lot more than what I had imagined, they question the scope of a photograph, the significance of the number, gender politics, and the socio-cultural associations with the passport-in a language we all speak.

Project concept:

Departing from a series of family photographs the journey started from working around the idea of loss impermanence and erasure. Photographs appealed to me because of the fact that they never change, even tough scenario changes the next moment after the “click” and eventually situations change, people and their presence change and in the longer run photographs become documentation, a memory of that time.

The whole idea about posed photographs appealed to me and how while posing we look straight into the camera and eventually strait into the viewers eyes. I tried capturing that strong confessing gaze by painting the naturalistic portraits but during the process the portraits evolved into a series of “Doll like mannequins”, ageless, genderless, identity less that adapt themselves in the photographs with the props and accessories attached to them.

Idiosyncrasies involved in passport photographs regarding gender, age, nostalgia, resemblance and preciousness of the identities embraced in one’s passport, builds a narrative around a character, which becomes inseparable from the image. A portrait devoid of all these characteristics not only questions the existence of all these concerns, but to me, these generic portraits break the sanctity of individuality. Underlying these painted representations of manipulated photographs is a narration that talks about this metamorphosis that doesn’t deal with evolution, On the contrary dehumanization of being. 

Review By Dua Abbas: Mariyam Rehman and Nida Bangash Show at Drawing Room Galley

Nida Bangash
War Rugs with Love

Curated by Usman Saeed
Saeed Akhtar Studio, Lahore
February 13 - 14, 2013


Just as a plant makes no mistake in turning towards the light, so man makes no mistake in following Revelation and, in consequence, in following tradition. There is something infallible in the natural instinct of animals, and also in the ‘supernatural instinct’ of men; but man is the only ‘animal’ capable of going against nature as such, either wrongly by violating it, or else by transcending it.
Diversity of Revelation
Frithjof Schuon 




Begin making your home with a beautiful foundation

The caption above was placed on a Land Reform Company’s advertisement in an American magazine in the 1980’s with an image of a timber-house under construction, sporting a Persian rug on its bare plywood floor. Memory of that image with that particular tagline is rekindled today at War Rugs with Love, Nida Bangash’s debut solo show in Pakistan. Fibered with an idea of redefining endurance, works in this show discard the globally politicized phenomenon of a ‘war rug’ to position its ingredients back to its timeless framework.

The threads begin to weave in Bangash’s birthplace Mashhad, Iran where in 2007, she commences the traditional art practice quotient of her MA (Hons.) Visual Arts Program, National College of Arts, Lahore. Under the supervision of Khanume Tawakolean, an old lady heading the carpet-weaving workshop, she produces a portion of a small rug adorned with a Persian arabesque pattern. For this show, the object culminates as War Rug 1 interpreting the most widely known reason of an armed conflict as a house, which marks nailed territories encompassing power, possession, control and security.

The yarn is interlaced inside the house, as War Rug 2 becomes a demarcation of the aforementioned ideals, set on the human scale of a prayer rug. War Mannequins 1 and 2 dwell into the minds and hearts of its inhabitants as portraits hinting on the inherent theatrics of domesticity and family life. Conclusively, Tree of Life puts forth twofold realities and binary forces breathing in and out- war and love.

Usman Saeed
February 2013

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

NIDA BANGASH

“BLACK SHEEP’S WOOL”

SEPTEMBER 6 - 15, 2011 -  CANVAS GALLERY, KARACHI

Nida Bangash’s work entitled ‘Black Sheep’s Wool’ is composed of two installations: A and B, containing twelve diptychs and eleven singular pieces, respectively. Installation A constitutes  of twelve envelops (4” x 9” each) with painted stamps (1” x 1.5” each); coupled with a series of twelve cotton-napkins marking stamped, one-liner letters. Installation B presents a series of photographs displayed as eleven stamp-sheets and  printed on A3 archival paper.

The core-weave of Bangash’s installations seems to owe its origin to the shifts amongst mankind, led by travelling in and around the recent modern times. Building upon the tangible webs of communication through ‘black and white’: the two opposite yet equal means to fabricate reality- the works are aimed to begin their outreach with the primary human quest: to chart out and inhabit the similarities and differences of skin, race, language and appearance.

Nida Bangash’s work entitled ‘Black Sheep’s Wool’ is composed of two installations: A and B, containing twelve diptychs and eleven singular pieces, respectively. Installation A constitutes  of twelve envelops (4” x 9” each) with painted stamps (1” x 1.5” each); coupled with a series of twelve cotton-napkins marking stamped, one-liner letters. Installation B presents a series of photographs displayed as eleven stamp-sheets and  printed on A3 archival paper.

The core-weave of Bangash’s installations seems to owe its origin to the shifts amongst mankind, led by travelling in and around the recent modern times. Building upon the tangible webs of communication through ‘black and white’: the two opposite yet equal means to fabricate reality- the works are aimed to begin their outreach with the primary human quest: to chart out and inhabit the similarities and differences of skin, race, language and appearance.