Ayesha Mariam Durrani

Abstract

Born in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 1976, Ayesha Mariam Durrani received her training as a contemporary miniature painter at the National College of Arts, Lahore. Durrani draws inspiration from classic Mughal painting and frequently uses Wasli paper, a handmade paper based on traditional Mughal papermaking techniques. Her signature style includes meticulously rendered miniature images of faceless mannequins. Durrani’s practice critiques the preconceived role of women in a patriarchal society. Her work focuses on social issues such as gender inequality and female identity and questions regional customs and oppressive traditions regarding women.

Biography

Ayesha Durrani was born in 1976 to an educated, affluent family in Peshawar, Pakistan. Her father was an automobile engineer, and her mother was a Pushto literature and mysticism specialist. After observing Durrani’s passion for drawing, her middle school teacher—an artist himself—encouraged her to pursue an art career. Her father’s death when she was only 11 years old changed the course of her family’s life. Durrani’s mother arranged her daughter’s marriage at age 19, in the third year of her bachelor’s degree. After getting married, Durrani studied law and English literature at Jinnah College for Women, Peshawar, where she completed her degree in 1996. She then changed the course of her formal education, pursuing art and earning a diploma in fashion design from the Pakistan School of Fashion Design Lahore. Later, she joined the National College of Arts in Lahore, completing her BFA in 2003.

Raised in a patriarchal society where women do not enjoy the same privileges as men in education, marriage, or domestic spheres, Durrani uses the body of the headless, dislocated mannequin as an anonymous voice of the suppressed. She incorporates the miniature painting technique with contemporary fashion trends as the syntax of her imagery. Her unconventional modern female forms are adorned with thread-like, delicate linear drawings of roses, either bearing golden halos behind the figures or appearing simply as black silhouettes. These images appear beautiful and elegant, but they are poignant as they also depict the difficult, suffocating conditions females face in society. It is a contemporary vocabulary that addresses social issues such as quotidian gender discrimination and the status of women in a patriarchal society. Her socially charged commentary on the politics of oppression and gender discrimination contextualises these rendered forms and challenges the notion of ideals of beauty versus intellect. Durrani states, “As women, we spend our whole lives trying to fit into the moulds made for us by the respective society or culture that we belong to. So much so that we eventually lose track of who or what we really are.”

Durrani’s ideally contoured, lifeless mannequin becomes a symbol of a ‘being’ with no intellect and, as such, represents what male members of society expect from an ideal woman. Her juxtaposition of the mannequins with the threads wrapping and binding them in intricate drawings of tapestry patterns reflects women's suspension between the modern world and old traditions and culture. The anonymity of the figures gives them universality that can extend to the plight of women anywhere in the world.

Bibliography

Naqvi, Amna T. and Akhtar, Asim. Isn’t She Lovely (Catalogue), Gandhara Art, 2008.

Hashmi, Salima and Dalmia Yashodhara. Memory, Metaphor, Mutations: Contemporary Art of India and Pakistan. Oxford University Press, 2007.

Salman, Saima. “Of Unfinished Business and Un Solicited Sidekick,” Dawn, March 25th, 2012.

Sharpe, Gemma. “Unity In Diversity,”Herald, April 2012.

Whiles, Virginia. Art and Polemic in Pakistan: Cultural Politics and Tradition in Contemporary Miniature Painting, London & New York: Tauris Publishers, 2010.

Further Readings

Vora, Swapna. “Ayesha Durrani: The Girl Next Door,” Asiainart.com, July 15, 2009,

http://asianart.com/articles/vora/durrani/2.html accessed on April 26, 2015

Melwani. Lavina. “Ayesha Durrani’s Women,” April 11th, 2010. http://www.lassiwithlavina.com/tag/ayesha-durrani, accessed on April 26, 2015

Bhutto, Fatima. “Operating Above the Law: Three Young Pakistani Women Express Outspoken Resistance to State Sanctioned Gender-Based Repression through Brave Art Practices.” ArtAsiaPacific, no. 66, pp. 57-58.