Aisha Khalid: I Am And I Am Not

I’m drenched
 in the flood
 which has yet to come

I’m tied up
In the prison
Which has yet to exist
Not having played
The game of chess
I’m already the checkmate
Not having tasted
a single cup of your wine
I’m already drunk
Not having entered
the battlefield
I’m already wounded and slain
I no longer
know the difference
between image and reality
Like the shadow
I am
And
I am not             
—Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi

Aisha Khalid aims to touch viewers with feelings that come from her heart and are pertinent amidst contemporary global life. Her conviction that both beauty and struggle are fundamental to deep spirituality is potent in her comprehensive retrospective curated by Masuma Halai Khwaja, presenting more than 40 of the artist’s works dating from 1993 to the present day.

Formally trained in Indo-Persian miniature painting traditions at the National College of Arts, Lahore, and having experienced a forced migration from her farmlands in Sindh to urban Punjab at a young age, painting has informed Khalid’s artistic language and been a vehicle to reflect on contemporary life for women, especially living with the expectations of Islam.

As Khalid took up textile practices and other media her interests expanded to conveying allusions to loss and suffering resulting from colonisation and other conflicts as well as the potential for all to counter sorrow through finding balance. A follower of Sufism for over two decades, the poetry of Sufi Saints such as Rumi and the concepts of hope and balance are fundamental to the creation of poetic yet unsettling works.

In addition to painting and works on paper, this first exhibition of her work in Aotearoa New Zealand includes video installations, sound, and a number of the large scale, elaborate tapestries Khalid has become known for. With a startling materiality formed with dressmakers pins and symbolic imagery, their multiple meanings range from celebrating the Prophet Mohammed and the Kaaba to forming allegorical investigations into the dichotomies between worldviews from the East and West. Khalid’s bold and unapologetic artworks create a powerful space for reflection on the self and the potential of the co-existence of spiritual and worldly existence.

Aisha Khalid lives and works in Lahore, Pakistan.
Masuma Halai Khwaja is an artist, curator and art educator based in Karachi, Pakistan. 

A 220 page book I Am and I Am Not with an artist interview, texts by Zohra Husain, Rajesh Punj, Ebba Koch, Amna Tirmizi Naqvi and Meher Afroz and reproductions of all the works, published by the Aisha Khalid Studio with HBL, is available.