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Lubna Jehangir

The highly personal visions communicated in Lubna Jehangir’s paintings are steeped in Sufi tradition, inspiration drawn from Sufi thought, folklore and mythology. Her work has a dream like quality. The flowing lines and her colour application technique are stylized and have a rhythmic flow. Minuscule dots, that require a high degree of concentration, heighten the delicacy and intricate detail in her work. She defines the technique she employs as; “Miniaturist Pointillism” – an amalgamation of the west and east; “Pointillism”, a late 19th century school and “Miniature Painting”, a centuries old tradition of the east. Once when a fellow artist asked her, “why the dots?” Her response was “I fragment the line as I don’t like walking the straight and narrow!” Each dot is unique in shape, form and in intensity of its colour, like the stars that fill the night skies.

Lubna sees herself as someone who has survived difficult professional and personal emotional journeys, which many women find themselves entangled in as they try and negotiate their way in an overwhelmingly patriarchal society. Refreshingly, she does not subscribe to the subjectivity of a victim. If anything, she feels that she has shed a lot of negativity and emerged a stronger individual. Lubna prefers to remain ‘backstage’ so to speak. Thus, at one level, as she says, “the entwined flowers and twigs, the colours alongside monochromatic treatment, represent the deceptiveness of my mannerism. It all looks colorful and attractive; yet there are barriers that protect from complete exposure.” It is a refreshing and invigorating change from the plethora of politically or personally focused, frequently depressing, subject matter of the oppression of women.

Lubna has come a long way from her initial pointillist monochromatic, almost tortured forms. There is now a burst of color, a certain joyful but restrained vibrancy and a strong painterly expression of an expanding and complex conceptual field. The determined pointillist grimness has given way to arabesque flowing lines, a certain lightness of being which remains intellectually anchored in a conceptual gravitas. Her paintings engage not only at the emotional and visually attractive level, but also draw attention to important ideas and themes via accessing what has been called ‘deep culture’.

Despite the almost ubiquitous female presence in her paintings, if Lubna manages to escape the stereotypical, it is because she has attempted to move beyond the personal, towards the transpersonal dimensions of human existence including Nature itself, particularly from a spiritual perspective. Obscured by the fog of fundamentalist religions today, this idea of the individual and collective feminine soul can still be glimpsed in the spiritual poetry (kafis) of the subcontinent and through epic works like, Shah Jo Risalo, Heer Ranjha, Sassi Punnu and Sohni Mahiwal. As a personal and cultural endeavor, Lubna’s paintings, ultimately reflect a multifaceted, universalist spiritual ecology.