Extra credit

Wilfredo Jimenez

Professor Cacoilo

Art and women

Extra Credit Post:

The Gateway Projects-

Hiba Schahbaz: Self Portrait

           

            Born in Karachi Pakistan, Hiba is a Brooklyn based artist who focused on miniature painting and graduated from the Pratt institute in New York City; with international gallery and fairs including the Vienna Art Fair, she is considered one of the most influential artist in New York and the world.

“I use the female figure to unfold a narrative that transcends cultural and political boundaries. I tell my own story while heavily embellishing it with imagination and metaphor. And although the protagonist in the work is me, she also carries a dual, existential meaning. I often use the female form as a tool, portraying thoughts and concerns from socio-cultural and political realms.”

This exhibition focused on what Hiba calls the “Gaze” known better to us as the male gaze. In her gallery show she questions the male gaze and challenges the ideals and origins of it. The paintings portray her in the nude posing for the male audience, she includes herself as the subject to challenge the patriarchy and force the audience to comprehend her point of view on the matter. I believe that the most successful part of this show is the way in which the audience is able to relate to the work and to the artist by her sharing her intimacy with the audience and creating trust. The naked body is sacred, and allowing someone to view you in your true self is a way of inviting them into your personal live. 

Growing up in a traditional Muslim country she women are not allowed to do as they please and they struggle for freedom to make their own choices; the man and parents dictate what goes and when it is done not leaving any breathing room for individuality. Failure to comply creates conflict that in most cases results in violent behavior and death, Hiba's criticism and exposure of her true-self is in violation of these beliefs and rules which makes her a target in her country and religion but the exhibition is successful because people like me get to experience her feelings in an attempt to relate and create awareness. 

Taking on the male gaze is taking on history itself, our modern society works based on the male gaze through media and print, corporations choose what to soon feed us and how much subjective content should be exhibited on a daily basis. Schahbaz challenges this idea by being the author, subject, and object; showing her knowledge, experience, and conceptual thinking all in one idea. We threat women as symbols and objects violating their rights to be and denying their development. These stylistic paintings provide the truth.

My favorite painting was "Self Portrait as The Grand Odalisque". As i gazed on it i felt a strong connection between her presence and nature, i come from a country were people are intimate and personal and the composition and ornamental elements of this paintings reminded me of the way my people carry themselves. It spoke of purity, simplicity, beauty, uniqueness and so many other things, the carvings were perfect and I believe that they can have a show of their own. It speaks to me as a study of the mind and dreams, wishes of freedom and desire to break the chains of the patriarchy, her face is shown as someone who has a lot to say but can't, someone who is forced to wait to express themselves.

Work Cited

"ABOUT." Hiba Schahbaz. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

Extra Credit Assignment

Jon-Carlos Sosa
Professor Cacoilo
April 29, 2017
Extra Credit Assignment

The Newark Museum

The Newark Museum located in Newark, New Jersey is a prestigious museum that carries an incredible amount of distinguished art collections from around the globe.  The Museum has collections from Western Hemisphere and also has collections that include Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Indian and Southeast Asian Art.  A main focus in this museum is the american art collection called "Seeing America".  "The renowned American art collection, on view in Seeing America, ranges from Colonial portraiture to a superb collection of Hudson River School landscape paintings, folk  and outsider art, as well as major works of modern and contemporary art in all media." (Newark)

From the "Seeing America" collection, it was essential to focus on the 18th  & 19th-Century exhibit.  The exhibit has many different sub galleries and the main attraction that I would like to focus on on two paintings from  the "Gretchen W. and James L. Johnson Gallery".

The first painting I would like to focus on from the selected gallery is Florine Stettheimer's Flower Piece from 1921. 

 The message in the title displayed the flower piece to be as:

 "Stettheimer has used an abstract vocabulary to create an image that has a sense of delicacy, whimsy and beauty.  The handles and stem of the vase look so fragile they would break if disturbed.  The paint in the flowers seems to have a all its own, at moments becoming thick and having tremendous presence, other time becoming lines of color that have nothing to do with making the flowers look real."

The message I feel addresses the issue of gender, patriarchy and feminism.  It represents these issues from all through the flowers, representing the female gender, which are living in this weak vase.  Moreover, the vase can be ideally representing this society and its weak mind of gender roles in this patriarchy structure of the 1920s.  

The artwork actually does catch the eye.  It catches the eye with the variety of color and ideal flowers painted for the audience to see.  I think without the description provided by the little plaque, it may go unnoticed to just a regular bystander with no art background.

It is an important to the discussion art due to impact it contributed to modernism movement.  The exhibition gallery for this museum does impact the significance of the painting.  It can be seen with other paintings that help contribute to the modernism movement.  An example of an other painting from the same gallery is Georgia O'Keefe's White Flower on Red Earth, No. 1 from 1943.  Overall, with the use of the gallery, it does creates a feeling for an observer to create a wonder to why are the images being painting and what is the true meaning being represented.  It encourages the observer to look outside of the museum for answers.

Work Cited:

Newark Museum Visitor's Guide. (n.d.). Retrieved April 29, 2017, from http://www.newarkmuseum.org/sites/default/files/NewarkMuseum_VisitorGuide.pdf

Extra Credit- Hiba Schahbaz

Karan Patel
Professor Cacoilo
Art and Women
29 April, 2017

Hiba Schahbaz, Self Portraits Exhibit

Hiba Schahbaz is a Pakistani female artist born and raised in Karachi. She received her BFA from the National College of Arts in Lahore, and when she moved to Brooklyn, New York later in her life she received her MFA from Pratt Institute. Schahbaz's most well known art style is Indo-Persian miniaturist painting. Her art exhibition which I will be discussing in this post is known as Self Portraits is displayed at Empty Space at Gateway Projects in Newark, New Jersey; it is an exhibition at Project For Empty Space’s inaugural Feminist Incubator program, GRAB BACK which is a continuous exhibition displaying artworks encouraging the empowerment and freedom of women.

Hiba Schahbaz, Self Portrait as The Grand Odalisque, 2016

As it is written on the wall carving in the exhibition, as well as the Project for Empty Space website, the themes surrounding her artwork mostly “explore female identity through form and subversive questioning of ‘the gaze.’”(Project for Empty Space). In the male predominated artistic world of Indo-Persian miniaturist painting, Schahbaz challenges the male gaze over women by painting nudes of herself through her own viewpoint. Expanding on this, according to her biography on her personal website, she defines her artistic methods in which she uses as support for themes displayed in her artwork as “In my work, I am both the artist and the performer. I photograph my body and use these images as references for my paintings. Through the stories I create I contemplate what it means to be a woman. These works addresses issues of personal freedom, destruction, sexuality and censorship by unveiling the beauty, fragility and strength of the female form” (Hiba Schahbaz.com).

Hiba Schahbaz, Self Portraits, 2016

As Schahbaz grew up in a traditional and conservative Muslim culture which rejects the paintings of nude women (especially by other women), Schahbaz was looked down upon by her family and by the rest of her society. “Traditionally, this type of painting was dominated by male artists; there is little evidence of female practitioners during its high period in South Asian from the early sixteenth through mid-nineteenth centuries. Women were frequently either the subjector ancillary ‘decorative’ figures. The way in which the female figure frequently functions in traditional Mughal miniature painting is in parallel to Western portraiture of a similar era, a topic which intrigues Schahbaz.”(Project for Empty Space). This quote expands on how significant Schahbaz's artwork is, since she is a woman who takes up what has been a majorly male dominated artistic style for centuries and uses to completely subvert the male gaze that has objectified women in her society. This symbolizes her addressing gender roles in her own society where women are subjected to be thought to be known as lesser than men all the while not being able to have the same freedoms as them to express themselves (painting nude paintings for example). Also her artwork addresses the patriarchal society that reinforces these gender roles since she adds female perspective to miniature painting, which has largely never even been considered considered in this art style for centuries. As a combination of both of these protests in her artwork, it can be derived that Hiba Schahbaz is a feminist as she against patriarchal domination of females; her artwork can also be seen as a beacon of inspiration to other aspiring female Muslim artists. The grand scale of which she paints some of her pieces are also significant as most miniature artwork is done on a small scale. This makes Schahbaz's Self Portraits even more empowering since it rebels on the very traditions that miniaturist style is based on, which even further supports it’s own message against the traditions of patriarchy since the style is predominantly patriarchal.

The Projects for Empty Space venue which exhibits Self Portraits definitely adds to the meaning of the entire exhibition. Project for Empty Space (as described on their curatorial material) is “a not-for-profit organization that creates socially engaging, multidisciplinary art exhibitions and programming that encourage social dialogue, education, and systemic movement towards equitability and empathy.” (Projects for Empty Space Curatorial Material). However, the exhibit itself is a part of an inaugural Feminist Incubator program named GRAB BACK, this program (according to the curatorial statement in the exhibit) “is prompted by mainstream attention to what has become a normalized climate of hyper-misogyny, rape-culture, and dehumanization of women [and] is a means of cultivating productive and critical intersectional dialogue and response to a violence against humanity.” (Projects for Empty Space curatorial material). What this basically means in short is that GRAB BACK, exhibits art that brings the topics it discusses such as rape-culture to light due to the fact that mainstream society today has blatantly just become normalized to it. The same can also be said about the unjust patriarchy that exists in the artworld, which is also brought to light in the programs exhibits.

Hiba Schahbaz, Self-Portrait as Eve, 2016

To be completely honest, I’m not completely sure if when, where, and how the audience would see the project would majorly affect the effect or meaning they would receive from the exhibit. However, I do know and realize that seeing a reproduction online does not offer the same effect as seeing the work in person. As I entered the Self Portraits exhibit, I felt mesmerized by Schahbaz's use of unique colors in her paintings as well as the scale of her works. When I viewed her artworks online before visiting the exhibit, I was certainly intrigued however not as mesmerized as seeing it in person. Seeing the work in person gave me more artistic appreciation for Schahbaz's work as well as being able to actually feel what she is trying to express in her art by being in front of it.

In conclusion, Hiba Schahbaz’s Self Portraits are a marvel that is extremely important to the discussion of art, as it protests the patriarchy that still exists to this day in other countries besides our own and keeps us in discussion about how we need to change it for the better.

Hiba Schahbaz, Self Portrait, 2016

Hiba Schahbaz, Self Portrait as Sleeping Venus, 2017

Curatorial Material

Curatorial Material

Work Cited

"ABOUT." Hiba Schahbaz. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

Space, Project For Empty. "Hiba Schahbaz: Self Portraits." Project for Empty Space | Artsy. N.p., 06 Apr. 2017. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

Hiba Schahbaz: Self Portraits

When I first entered the gallery the first major theme that I saw Hiba Schahbaz explore was the male gaze. Everywhere I walked I saw her eyes stared and I saw her in the nude either adorned in pearls or nature laying by her side but one thing remained the same.... it was her calm stare. The large scale paintings caught my attention because I can feel her presence even more and the weight of her message towards the audience. The medium Schahbaz used allowed me to see her wild expressive brush strokes in some of her paintings while in others I was able to observe how she carefully created very clean lines that defined her face and other parts of the paintings. For example, Schahbaz very carefully paints very fine eyelashes and eyebrows almost as if she were there in person. The artist carefully makes sure the colors of her iris, pupil, and sclera remain intact and unmixed in each painting. In the exhibition, Hiba Schahbaz addresses patriarchy which is something that continues to infest in her culture as a Pakistan woman and in the Western culture. It's interesting to see a woman of her position openly paint herself nude, which is something that is not highly encouraged in her culture and in the Western culture.Despite being the subject and the artist, Schahbaz is still able to break boundaries by replicating poses of female figures that were painted from men with ease.In one painting, the artist defiantly closes her eyes and blissfully lays there unconcerned of what the audience may think of her and her hair is no longer covering her body but is relaxed.A few wisps of hair escape and rest on her arm. Being able to see her work in person allowed me to appreciate the little details she added to every painting and have a personal connection to the artist and her work. When visiting a museum the audience can appreciate small and intricate details the artist has dedicate during the artistic process.I believe being able to see paintings at a museum rather than online allows the audience to step into another world and allow themselves to absorb the artist's message more intimately and for the audience to be able connect within themselves on a more profound level. When I entered the museum I was thinking about all the things I had to do and everyday things. But the second I was able to step into the exhibition, everything was erased with the presence of the artwork and the silence that surrounded it.

Jaiheer Rogers
Art and Women History
April 29, 2017
Extra Credit Hiba Schahbaz

For the extra credit assignment I visited the Empty Space Gallery in Newark of Hiba Schahbaz self portraits. I enjoyed looking at her extravagant works. Hiba Schahbaz works focus on her own female figure to unfold cultural and political boundaries. Hiba Schahbaz said "I speak an ancient language in a contemporary feminine voice. Trained in the centuries-old traditional Indo-Persian painting technique, working with imagery developed by men to tell the stories of antiquity, I aim to challenge the inflexible rules of miniature painting and recontextualize the art form to accept and embrace a female perspective(p.2)." Her works addresses feminism movement. She is both the artist and uses her own body to express and help influence the message she intends to convey. She photograph  However the exhibit has all her famous works in a spacious gallery with a lot of walking space. 

In my work, I am both the artist and the performer. I photograph my body and use these images as references for my paintings. Through the stories she create she shows what it means to be a women. A women These works addresses issues of personal freedom, destruction, sexuality and censorship by unveiling the beauty, fragility and strength of the female form(p.1).

She managed to tell her own personalwhile heavily embellishing it with imagination and metaphor.  She often use the female form as a tool, portraying thoughts and concerns from socio-cultural and political realms(p.2). When visiting her work in person the audience can have a personal connection woth the small details that hold subluminal messages to paint a vivid picture.  She inspire females to self express them selves with confiedence in the art world.

All her work is vividly colorful, in which she pursue the world of the beautiful in her work, resulting in visually appealing paintings. This delicate allure is underscored. Things are not quite what they seem. 

    Works Citied

http://www.hibaschahbaz.com/about/

Gateway Empty Space Gallery Hiba Self Portraits