BackMehreen Murtaza: Formulated chaos
The Pakistani artist's new body of work uses image, text and noise to create a multi-layered montage
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Pakistani artist Mehreen Murtaza’s striking photomontages and installations may have a life of their own in the real world of art fairs and galleries, but they transport the viewer to places that perhaps exist only in dreams.
Found images—sourced from print, digital and electronic media—come together in her work to form intriguing collages. Lawyers assemble on streets amid a burst of sinister red; a Big Brother-like figure watches the goings-on from the heavens; and a superhero takes flight into a great gig in the sky. Those who are aware of political and social upheavals in Pakistan will find enough resonances in Murtaza’s work without being oppressed by the obvious.
Born in 1986 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Murtaza was educated at Beaconhouse National University in Lahore and now lives and works in that city. Her practice is reminiscent of the masters of Stuckist and Pop Art, especially of Richard Hamilton, but her eye has also absorbed the nuances of indigenous iconography—miniature painting, film posters and the immensely popular Truck Art imagery of Pakistan.
Murtaza has experimented boldly, often by introducing religious icons into her art. In an earlier work, Who Are You, Defenders of The Universe?, she had placed an oversized black cube in the middle of the gallery. While this minimal readymade recalled the Kaaba in Mecca, it also brought to mind Russian artist K.S. Malevich’s famous painting Black Square (1915), or even a UFO from outer space.
Murtaza’s manner can be easy and charming but also complicated and cerebral. Her new body of work, Score For a Film, uses canned noise, found images and footage to script a narrative that invokes sci-fi, fantasy, film noir and political satire. Edited excerpts of an email interview:
Can you briefly talk about the new show?
How do you react to being called a “Pakistani artist"? How is your work received in your home country?
I don’t necessarily identify as a “Pakistani" artist, except on the basis of the fact that I am currently living and working in Lahore. However, I do have a problem with being referred to as a Pakistani artist in a context where stereotypes may be reinforced through regurgitated visual representations of the region—drone attacks, Osama bin Laden, Taliban, the veil, and so on. In some cases, the need to be identified as a Pakistani artist may be justified, as it prepares a certain section of viewers for the fact that the
work may carry narratives that are not translatable.
I have not exhibited for the longest time in Pakistan. My work has also developed over the years and taken newer directions since I last exhibited in Lahore and Karachi.
Your work is often a curious collage of images, noises and texts, culled out of various sources, contexts and inspirations. What is the creative process like for you?
I feel this beautiful found description of “white noise" describes my practice succinctly: “A purely theoretical sound concept that imagines an infinite bandwidth, a flat and dense noise signal that has equal power at any frequency, therefore the signal would be infinite, and impossible to generate. It infers a drone, an unparalleled existence in the acoustic realm and functions as a formless contradiction. It is a kind of formulated chaos being experienced when heard."
I would, however, like to make it clear that my practice is developing to (or at least aspires to) be a syncretic interplay between disciplines and across varied media—from photographs, montages, films, sculptural elements to an attempted amalgamation of different schools of thought.
These may appear disconnected at first, but I see a complex web of interconnectedness arising out of thematic concerns. The uncertainty generated by these interventions is intended to provoke new ways of understanding one’s environment. I believe these moments of hesitation, however temporary, can activate previously imperceptible modes of inquiry and encourage critical reflection.
And even the way the works are installed says something about a kind of methodology that for me is a very particular, but very precise, way of looking at editing, montage and layering. The idea is to explore different narratives and histories, even if they are contradictory or contrapuntal, all together and find new openings. I would be happy if my work did nothing other than direct people across 90 degrees so that they are forced to view the world from a different vantage point.
The spillover of various schools of thoughts in my work is also an attempt to push conceptions of “hybridity" as proposed by, say, cultural theorist Homi Bhabha or by the conceptual artist and curator, Rasheed Araeen. I am excited by the various points of intersections or contradictions that deal with confusion—cultural or otherwise.
Do you feel any sense of belonging to particular tradition(s) of art-making? Which artists do you feel an affinity with?
It is difficult for me to name artists who I have an affinity with as compared to specific works, but there are plenty whose practices I enjoy and have been in a private conversation with. Some of them are Alexandre Singh, Slavs & Tatars, Elad Lassry, Anri Sala, Seth Price, Felix Kubin, Július Koller, Amalia Pica, and Robert Smithson. I have been reading the works of philosophers like Reza Negarestani, an Iranian, and Nick Land, who is British, in copious amounts—that is as close as it comes to following a kind of “tradition" in art-making.
What would you have been if you weren’t an artist?
I can’t imagine. I’d probably still be operating under some practice allotted to artistic production—whether it be films, music or even theatre.
Score For a Film is on till 9 September at Experimenter, 2/1 Hindustan Road, Gariahat, Kolkata.
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