Wardha Shabbir: Green Matter
The Growing Passage | Gouache On Acid Free Paper | 2021
Wardha Shabbir’s show ‘Green Matter’ opens at the Canvas Gallery in Karachi on 13th July.
A note from the artist: “The flowing mass of green signifies a human being’s potential to resist and pursuit to survive.
In trying to possess the ‘physical’ world, we inevitably give in to the insurmountable casualties of life. The paths we take betray us, and the imponderable weigh our anonymous hearts down. Dreams remain unrealized, and a mere sense of them lingers. Suffering, on the other hand, is found and encountered in abundance. These experiences, while inherent in human existence, have the tendency to stimulate an intuitive cycle.
Utilising its true potency, the mind fortifies an eternal paradise and its confines are limited only by our silence. It plies laboriously in isolation; carefully replacing elements of loss and bereavement with hope and replenishment.
These lived ‘external’ experiences of the world, pave a path toward our self-perpetuating existence. An ‘internal’ reliance for survival provokes an awareness of how we had to live and how we could live. Ideas start to take precedence over ideals and thus begin an irreversible journey of empowerment.
And, it seems that…
…new grass grows to replace the old, dying grass: her breathing forceful and her movement deliberate. The light, rooted and radiating from deep within her soul, nourishes the topsoil, and the river flows seamlessly. She becomes fearless as the idea of a complete self is born, recurring and renewed each time through the ‘green’ paradise of her mind.”
- Wardha Shabbir, 2021
Wardha Shabbir (b. 1987, Lahore, Pakistan) lives and works in Lahore, Pakistan. She graduated with a BA in Fine Arts from the National College of Arts, Lahore in 2011, winning the Principal’s Honour Award. She is currently Visiting Lecturer in Fine Arts at the National College of Arts. Trained in traditional miniature painting, her technique consists of the coming together of countless dots as a unit to form an idea on the surface of the paper.