Notes from a Conversation – anticolonial maps for lost lovers

Scroll Down

The Work

A journey mapped in the form of conversations of openness and sharing space.

What happens when two strangers, or two entities enter into each other? How do they create space for one another? What else is being created during this union?

The land and sea become witness. A meeting point is formed in the midst of a sensory labyrinth, with half broken, half builtwalls, new and old territories are explored, a space continues to be redefined. Making more space for the other, for pain, for joy, for love, heartbreak and dreams.

“…You and I intertwine into reimagining spaces; our lovers can be the land and sea - the two entities don't need borders to enter into each other.

May I meet you halfway? Here, we might find a place where we can fall in love. A place where there are only lovers and no rules….”

“…This love story between the mind and heart forms a reverie and knocks on the door of a stifling existence. I reimagine and reinvent a lost love.

Remember we talked about how joy and pain collided….”

Artist Interview

Fizza Saleem

Fizza is a visual artist and educator. She has studied at the National College of Arts, Lahore and graduated from Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture with a major in Painting in 2002. She is currently completing her M.Phil. in Art and Design at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi.

Fizza's work brings attention to places where light and shadow coexist. Empty rooms are filled with light that results in altering these spaces. However, space exists, and can never be replaced, after all is done. Even time.

Fizza investigates the states of night and day as experienced by the human mind, focusing on how memory engages with these states in a non-linear way, and in no hierarchical order. Like flowing water, it changes place and form every second.

Life: a constant tug in search of light. Life: transient in nature graspable no more than in droplets of bliss. Fizza is fascinated by the human mind's capacity to finds the extraordinary in the ordinary. Fizza strives to find the sunshine that is hiding in little nooks and corners, often empanelled with a dark shadow. Almost, often, always. Sometimes the light might feel a little dim, but it is almost always followed by another day.

This summer as Fizza investigated the states of light and shadow, she found her centre in the Oshu forest in Northern Pakistan, staying with a space where they coexisted. A tree extended its weightless weight on her, by allowing her to place her trust on the natural course of life as she lived it. Oshu, deepending its roots and extending its verticality in all its majesty embracing, life in the present. In the coming months, Fizza will be holding her fifth solo show along with two group shows in three different cities.

Zoya Abbas

Zoya is a multidisciplinary artist based in Karachi, Pakistan. She is currently enrolled in the M.Phil. in Art and Design at Indus Valley School for Art and Architecture in Karachi.

With an undergraduate degree in communication design from National College of Arts in Lahore, completed in 2010, she has worked in advertising and digital media marketing as a creative consultant and taught 'O' Level art and design.

Zoya has also earned online certifications at MOMA (Museum of Modern Art), Stanford University, and the University of California, Santa Cruz in fields ranging from modern and contemporary art to abstract painting, photography, and gender and feminist theory.

Zoya's current research and studio practice looks at feminist narratives from the Global South and the question of home and belonging.

Do any of these works interest you?

Keep Scrolling