The kettle whistles with a soft sound in the kitchen air. The pots and pans, against the pale backdrop, hum to the melody in unison – chai is done. The two women, seen in the frame, hover together, clad in blue and white dupattas. One of them picks up the saucepan and pours the liquid carefully into the thermos, the other holds the sieve right above.
Together.
Kin to kin.
What is a common domestic occurrence in many desi households is what is also shown in the work titled ‘Grandaunts’. An ode to the brilliancy of Irum Rahat, who is a Lahore-born and London-based fine artist and an NCA and 2023 CSM alumnus, the painter’s work has captivated many across the globe, especially with its repeated notions of domesticity and gendered spatiality. It has also become quite a tool of resistance in the patriarchal setup we find ourselves in.
While Irum continues to work as an artist based abroad, her positionality as a diasporic individual gives her art a sense of building a much-needed archive, along with challenging the narrative of internal labor that often gets forgotten and hence neglected. The artist has showcased her work in the Art Academy Gallery, Good Rice Gallery, Rajiv Memon Contemporary, and can be found posting snippets of her work and updates of her journey in the art realm on Instagram.
MALIHA HASAN: At first glance, your art seems to capture mundaneness, common scenes like someone lounging in their room or making chai in the kitchen, almost an ode to the normal that we often miss out on. What do you see in everyday moments and objects?
IRUM RAHAT: I think it started from wanting to archive my own personal familial history and then it branched out to painting whatever was, mostly when I moved away from it but also, when I was still in Lahore. I started noticing what else is there in terms of familiarity, in terms of what it feels like home but isn’t home. This is why I see these moments or these spaces, or maybe even these people as repositories of intimacy, of my own memory.
Increasingly, I think it’s also about neglected spaces or moments of unnoticed labor. For example, the painting that Lakeer Magazine published with one of their articles – ‘Grandaunts’ – that was unnoticed labor. There is so much about family, women’s lives, and domesticity that it becomes important to tell all those stories too. I think for me, painting these moments is a lot like practicing quiet resistance.
MH: That is a very good answer because when you say unnoticed labor, it reminds me of how activities that all of us are performing are collective in nature. But then at the same time, nobody is putting in the effort of realizing that this is labor and it represents certain ideas and certain thoughts.
IR: Well, it’s not paid labor, right? So, it’s easier to ignore and neglect!
MH: Building on the idea about neglected spaces, the people, places and memories this phrase has encased within itself, has that always been the inspiration behind your paintings, or did they start out from something else and later shifted towards this specific notion? And how would you define your process when you’re creating these paintings?
IR: It has evolved in terms of what I painted or how I approached what I was painting, because I think when I started, which was at the NCA during my bachelor’s program, it was a bit more naive and unrefined, but it’s evolved in terms of me really anchoring myself into my painting practice, and also into what I’m painting, which is the ‘familiar’ and ‘familial’.
I think my process is really intuitive. It is based on painting, primarily. There’s a very common saying amongst artists that painting is always first and foremost about painting. And only after that it’s about anything and everything else. Loosely translated, it is also about archiving the sort of history that I collect, which is through photographs taken by me. Although, I’m now moving on to writing down a lot of family stories, anecdotes, and plan on inculcating them into titles of certain works. And then when it comes to just painting, sometimes I do prints before, or draw, or go straight on a canvas.
But it just depends on what I think the narrative requires or how I want to think about it before reaching a resolved piece of work. Plus, the initial inspiration of where the process really begins is just me living through these experiences. Because these are familiar spaces and moments to me, it’s very much painting my own life.
MH: It’s quite common for artists to delve into different mediums. Has that been the case with you? Or have you ever felt anxious about your style and had the urge to experiment?
IR: I have experimented because I’ve been in art school for almost six years in total. So yes, I did experiment during school, but now I do feel very grounded in my painting practice. For example, last year I had a publication that was written and presented at an off-print publication event held at the Tate Modern in London. Such experiments sort of inculcate what I’m exploring into my practice, but across different mediums. My prints are like that too, which I did more during my MA. But, for now, in terms of finished and resolved work, I would say that after all the experimentation, it’s painting that I am sticking with, and I’m very, very grounded and very happy with where I am going.
Sometimes, in a painting alone, you can switch things up so much. There isn’t only one way to paint. There’s always constant exploration in there, and hopefully I’m still doing that, and people can see it as more work and shows come out, like a subtle shift in palette or a stronger shift in palette for me.
MH: How would you describe your art style the way it is now?
IR: Well, it is figurative painting. In terms of what I’m exploring within the work, I would say that a lot has to do with memory, and that’s also in the process of creating a painting. This includes stripping down and adding layers, along with using different mediums.
When I am present in the act of painting, the process becomes an act of remembering, memory unfolding itself in an almost immediate and visceral manner. Even if I haven’t done, let’s say, a preparatory sketch for a painting, I am still translating it onto a brush immediately. Yeah, that’s what I would say. But it’s figurative painting, and if I had to define it under a broader umbrella of terminology, it can also be referred to as genre painting.
MH: Besides memory, what other themes do you find recurring? Perhaps space or maybe identity?
IR: Yes. There’s a lot about identity in my work, and after I moved countries, that theme became a lot stronger, because moving away gives you the perspective of dislocation which really hardens your identity and makes you very aware of it. There’s a lot to do with domesticity and space, and not necessarily them being the same thing, but just cultivating that domestic space for females and how it is associated with women in Pakistan. That was also one of those starting points for me that has kept evolving.
These spaces also signal an acquired sense of power within them due to the many acts happening inside them. And the notion that they belong to women motivates me to archive all acts and moments through painting. So yeah, all of these would be themes in my work.
MH: Do you think going abroad for an MFA after your bachelors impacted the way you look at your own work or perceive your own art style?
IR: Yes, one hundred percent. Both experiences were transformative, but moving away definitely widened my lens of looking at the world and looking at my work. The presence of the figure has become a lot more prominent after I came to where I am currently residing. This, on its own, shows how identity made its way even amongst all the stubbornness and urgency to show identities and histories generally. Moving away from Lahore strengthened how I showcased figure and identity combined. And where the body comes, in a painting, it just becomes more political. These are not bodies we’re used to seeing a lot in the media, in art, in painting, because they’re brown. Obviously, that’s changing now, thanks to a lot of South Asian artists doing great work, but I think moving away definitely gave me a lot more perspective in terms of narrative. Plus, the NCA was amazing because it taught me everything I knew in terms of technicality and painting while giving me that initial exposure. But I think here I’ve become a lot more deliberate about what I’m doing.
MH: Setting aside everything else, including our conversation at the moment, I, as a viewer, was able to see this idea of femininity, space, and memory and how these are challenging the patriarchal setup that is very prominent in Pakistan. Is this something that you have been actively trying to acknowledge in your paintings?
IR: Yes, I would say that is also one of the themes in the work, although it may or may not be obvious. I am trying to center female presence, not as a spectacle but as a whole, complete, complicated, complex subject. That’s where challenging the patriarchy sort of comes into the work. It resists male gaze and pushes back against this narrative that you have to live your life according to certain principles and experiences, which are a result of the patriarchal viewpoint themselves.
Not everybody in Pakistan has the liberty to challenge the prevalent patriarchy. A lot of the experiences that I saw growing up were from inside the safety of a house and its four walls. As a result, I gravitated towards these domestic spaces and homely interiors at first to see how and why these were safe spaces – or were cultivated to be safe, because they’re not always that for everybody, right? I resist the narrative that only lives lived outside of the four walls of a house are important enough to be retold. When these women who step out are glorified, there is no focus on the work they continue to do when they are back in the house. That labor is neglected and unpaid. And by unpaid, I mean monetarily, which is why it is underappreciated. My work pushes back against that very culture of hustle, speed, visibility, and other qualities associated with patriarchy and men.
MH: In the painting ‘Grandaunts’ there are two women, one of whom is pouring chai in a thermos while the other holds the strainer. I am not sure if it is intentional, the singularity and plurality of women within various works of yours. How would you differentiate between those two?
IR: It was intentional, so I feel that there’s more to it. It is not necessary to show any of these identifiable presences through any human figurative presence in my work for a narrative to come through. And by narrative I imply domesticity, neglect, memory, or the importance of space. I think this itself is also a patriarchal idea of representation, that only the body can represent what is important. These objects, these spaces, these moments are also repositories of those people. It goes without saying that such spaces do it themselves without a human presence in them. With this painting, the Grandaunts, it was this tender moment of sisterhood and unspoken coordination and choreography of a ritual between them where both women just did the steps organically. It spoke to a sense of community and family which I relate to, have seen, and want to show.
All the elements I talked about further pique my interest in relational dynamics, which is where painting my family, or families of people I know closely, comes in a lot. And that includes anybody that incites that feeling of home, which I suppose I’m always looking for in some way or another. That is also why I think most of the works with a singular figure maybe have more solitude about them, even if they themselves are engaged in some sort of activity.
The people in my paintings also become characters in my work because I’m also recreating them rather than portraying them as they are. And I think now you will see more and more characters emerge.
MH: I’m actually very excited to know the process behind naming each painting. The painting we were talking about just now, what does the name imply?
IR: When I’m done with a certain body of work, I write about them, about the pieces. The naming has a lot to do with that writing. With my titles, I sometimes want to be a little playful because I don’t want to say everything in them. I just want to give enough context to the viewer to be placed in the space I’m taking them through. It’s a rather fun process for me. Once the painting is done, I get to whip out my journal and say, okay, what are we doing? What are we going through? What was happening? So that also becomes an act of remembering, just like the act of painting was. I really enjoy titling my works now!
Maliha Hasan is a writer, occasional poet, and researcher. She is currently pursuing two personal archival projects centered around documenting houses in post-Partition Karachi and historical preservation of Hyderabadi cuisine as means of community building. If not working, you can find them designing things for their friends, or playing with their cats.