I Am A Tree

Part of "War Rugs with Love" series, I Am A Tree is a body of work inspired by an excerpt of Orhan Pamuk's novel, "My Name Is Red". This body of work constitutes a series of Artsit Books , Text pieces, drawings and paintings. 

 

 

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. This tagline resonates in the first strand of works at Nida Bangash’s premier solo exhibition in USA. Fibered with an idea of redefining endurance, these works discard the globally politicized phenomenon of a ‘war rug’ by positioning 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 that marks nailed territories encompassing power, possession, control and security: a house. 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.

 

The series Tree of Life puts forth the forces of war and love breathing in and out in a twofold way - the pairs of paintings seemingly compliment and contradict each other employing a balancing act between monotone and color. This harmonic play on every dual phenomenon both known or riddle-like to human intelligence, conclusively roots itself in the artist's book: I Am A Tree. Inspired by an excerpt of Orhan Pamuk's novel My Name Is Red, the book retains a binary dialog between any primordial truth with its counter postmodern theology. I Am A Tree unfolds to establish a hallmark feature of Bangash's practice: intricacy, delicately teamed up with a translucent afterglow.

 

Text by

Usman Saeed 

November, 2014