Point-line-plane: Ahmer Farooq plays with the exploration of choice

Art, in its purest form, is the representation of the artist’s feelings being echoed onto the canvas as a reflection of all that they hold inside them. Anger, remorse, pain, hurt, love, happiness – all find themselves being translated into pieces of art in various different mediums as a way of bringing out the eternal truth. An example of this can be seen in the work produced by Pakistani artist Ahmer Farooq who explores the tenuous line of life choices, love, and societal pressures in his latest work.

Farooq – who is a Lahore-based artist and received The Stephen Medd ‘Artist of the Year’ award in 1999 – explores the complex nature of developing one’s sense of self within a web of societal pressures.

“My work originates and takes inspiration from the people around me, the society I live in, its culture, and how our social norms affect our social behaviours,” the artist told Instep. “The main subject of my artwork is suppressed sexuality in Pakistan, and how we go about keeping it discreet. It talks about the choices we make and how they may not be accepted,” he added further.

The artist, who explores such topics via his unique style of using language and figuration by imbuing his canvases with a script of Urdu, ensures that he does not shy away from many discourses rarely discussed in a society which tends to consider anything breaking the status-quo to be transgressive in its nature.

“I position figures on the canvas to trigger emotions from shame, fear, insecurity, self-loathing, and loneliness to longing, passion, love, and desire, keeping it discreet, like the way sexual activities accrue in Pakistan,” Farooq discussed. “Using the Urdu language, its script and form to frame the figures, I contextualise my work within the local. Akin to the Urdu language, these relationships are rich in essence, complex in form, and ever-changing, the highly stylised calligraphy adding to the aesthetic appeal.”

The artist is one of the few mainstream names today who focus strongly on incorporating shapes, letters, and words as a medium to project the incomprehensibility of the relationships, along with juxtaposing them with a hue of shades, such as vibrant colours reflecting emotions of passion and dark tints reflecting hopelessness.

Farooq also aims to move forward from this rather hypocritical approach society takes towards topics that go beyond the confirmative in his pieces.

“In my works, I turn my gaze towards the oppression of sexual freedom in the Pakistani society. I wish to highlight the existence of courtship, ‘non confirmative’ relationships, and extra-marital affairs in an overtly conservative Islamic country where heterosexual marriage is the only accepted form of intimacy,” Farooq commented. “This work underscores the web of emotions, bonds, and tensions that tie couples together, as they are crippled from the outside. Bound to secrecy, a lover is seen as a shadow figure often reduced to sex.”

The artist – whose work has been featured alongside pieces by the likes of Damien Hirst – aims to take his highly-stylised art form beyond the confines of homes and studios, and even from the art galleries of Pakistan, towards a bigger audience worldwide that could understand the many dichotomies the country exists within. “I plan to expand my work by practising my art in different forms, such as sculptures and installations, for my future shows,” the artist said. “I am also expanding my viewership to a larger audience by taking my artwork outside of Pakistan. I have recently shown in the U.S. and soon I have a show in Europe.”

Although art is yet to find itself a space in mainstream spaces of Pakistan as a form which could explain to society its many hypocrisies in interpretations they understand, Ahmer Farooq’s work is a step in the right direction as it goes into the intricacies of things without holding back.