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As a practitioner it has been more than obvious to me that the judgments passed on painting are too hasty and probably more a result of the rush in the market to follow what appeared for the moment to be trendier. Some confusion is created trying to navigate the post modern because people appear to associate post modernism with new media rather than the related and i feel, quite significant concepts.

As an abstract artist and an anthropologist the post modern attitude could not have come at a better time for me. i have been constructing mixed media abstracts for many years. instead of paint, i use materials like cement, fabric, nails, rope, urdu text and i find a political statement in the very choice of my material. I try to complicate and layer this further through well thought out processes like burning, writing , cutting or binding which act like signs. Though my ideas are politically infused, i try to make careful attempts to develop the abstract language i am using, even as i seem to favour the informal. My work glides across media like relief paintings, installations, drawing, poetry, sound works ...now and then i find myself visualizing video poems.

Obviously, for us artists, technology has merely opened new pathways to express ourselves but its of little relevance how trendy or new the medium might be. our preferences are based more on who we are, the subject, access, the idea, the emotion or a combination of all these. my point is that there never should have been any doubt about the possibility of being, it is not the medium but the logic behind the underlying artistic choices and how path breaking they are and of course the nature of our convictions that will ultimately shift boundaries in both art and thought. 
That is the way of the untitled.

www.sabahasan.com