16th March – 19th May 2019, 18:30 – 22:30
This exhibition—In the Absence of Shadows—seamlessly blends Ahmed’s Indo-Pakistani painterly tradition with her Western artistic training. The works on display show a departure from her previous paintings by exploring the idealized worlds and forms found in Persian, Mughal, and Pahari paintings. Ahmed contemplates how traditional painters mastered the thickness of the line in order to create the illusion of depth in the absence of shadows. The use of shading (pardakht), dots (nuqtas), and lines (lakeerain) practiced in traditional miniature painting is demonstrated across her works, while in some newer works, she combines the infinite repetition of Islamic geometry and patterns with the same techniques used in Quranic illuminations. Thus, by taking a new direction, the artist has mastered the line; the paintings demonstrate a harmonious expression of her skill and understanding of these art forms.