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.