Hiba Schahbaz at Almine Rech
Highlighting the ART FOR CHANGE artist's ongoing exhibition
Hiba Schahbaz's solo exhibition, Summer of Dragons, at Almine Rech.
Born in Karachi, Pakistan, Hiba Schahbaz is a Brooklyn-based figurative painter who works primarily with paper, black-tea, and water based pigments. Her subjects, largely drawn from her lifelong practice of self portraiture, inhabit a dreamlike, all-female world. On view now at Almine Rech, Schahbaz’s solo exhibition, Summer of Dragons, brings together 15 paintings of these mythical creatures across a variety of mediums and formats; in watercolor on tea-stained, handmade paper, watercolor on wood and oil on linen.
In Summer of Dragons, where Eastern and Western iconographies of dragons tend to show them in combat with valiant male warriors, Schahbaz’s fire-breathing beasts, in contrast, are portrayed as protectors and allies of women. Occasionally they are even hybridized as female, half-human chimeras.
In her 2022 limited edition print with ART FOR CHANGE, Dreaming at Sunset, Schahbaz explores similar themes of femininity and hybridity.
SHOP THE PRINT
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HIBA SCHAHBAZ
Dreaming at Sunset, 2022
18 x 24 inches
Limited edition of 10 with 6AP + 1PP
Hand-embellished, signed and numbered by the artist
SHOP THE PRINT
Dreaming at Sunset is an homage to ritual, spirituality, and shared human histories. The mermaid reclines in water dotted with translucent lotuses and light waves. The setting sun in the magenta sky reflects out along the surface of the water in gold, washed highlights framing the figure. Part of a recent body of work concerning myth and oral tradition, Schahbaz’s mermaids were born when the artist emerged from a deep period of sadness. Engaging in the breadth of cultures with female sea creatures and goddesses, such as the Inuit Sedna, West Africa Mami Wata, or the South East Asian Suvannamaccha, the artist created her own myth of a woman’s gulf of tears and sadness, blessing her with a magical tail to swim the sea of her tears and find strength in vulnerability. The artist has hand-embellished the edition with a combination of watercolor, gouache, gold leaf, collaged birds and flowers, and a written blessing, making each print a unique work.
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Hiba Schahbaz hand-embellishing her 2022 ART FOR CHANGE print, Dreaming at Sunset.
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ABOUT THE ARTIST
Born in Karachi, Pakistan, Hiba Schahbaz is a Brooklyn-based figurative painter who works primarily with paper, black-tea, and water based pigments. Her subjects, largely drawn from her lifelong practice of self portraiture, inhabit a dreamlike, all-female world. Schahbaz initially trained in Indo-Persian miniature painting at Lahore’s National College of Arts, and later earned a Master’s in Painting from Pratt Institute in New York. Her work addresses issues of personal freedom, destruction, sexuality and censorship by unveiling the beauty, fragility and strength of the female form.
Her solo shows include In My Heart a public art installation at (Rockefeller Centre 2021), Dreaming (De Buck Gallery 2020) In Solitude (De Buck Gallery, 2020), The Garden (Spring/Break Art Show, 2018), Hiba Schahbaz: Self-Portraits (Project for Empty Space, 2017), Hanged With Roses (Thierry Goldberg Gallery, 2015), and In Memory (Noire Gallery, 2012). Schahbaz has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including a recent show curated by Jasmine Wahi in Tokyo, “all the women. in me. are tired.”, at THE CLUB, as well as exhibitions at NiU Museum of Art, The Untitled Space, and Center for Book Arts; and has shown at art fairs such as Pulse Art Fair, Untitled Art Fair, Art Fair Cologne, and Vienna Fair.
Her work has been written about in Vice, Hyperallergic, The Huffington Post, Coveteur, Vogue, NY Magazine, Art Critical, ArtForum, Bomb Mag, Paper, and others. Schahbaz has curated painting exhibitions in Pakistan and India, and she was an artist-in-residence at Mass MoCA, The Wassaic Project, Vermont Studio Center, and the Alfred Z. Solomon Residency at the Tang Museum. She teaches miniature painting at the Art Students League in New York, and her work is held in private collections around the world.
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Born in Karachi, Pakistan, Hiba Schahbaz is a Brooklyn-based figurative painter who works primarily with paper, black-tea, and water based pigments. Her subjects, largely drawn from her lifelong practice of self portraiture, inhabit a dreamlike, all-female world. On view now at Almine Rech, Schahbaz’s solo exhibition, Summer of Dragons, brings together 15 paintings of these mythical creatures across a variety of mediums and formats; in watercolor on tea-stained, handmade paper, watercolor on wood and oil on linen.
In Summer of Dragons, where Eastern and Western iconographies of dragons tend to show them in combat with valiant male warriors, Schahbaz’s fire-breathing beasts, in contrast, are portrayed as protectors and allies of women. Occasionally they are even hybridized as female, half-human chimeras.
In her 2022 limited edition print with ART FOR CHANGE, Dreaming at Sunset, Schahbaz explores similar themes of femininity and hybridity.
SHOP THE PRINT
--
|
HIBA SCHAHBAZ
Dreaming at Sunset, 2022
18 x 24 inches
Limited edition of 10 with 6AP + 1PP
Hand-embellished, signed and numbered by the artist
SHOP THE PRINT
Dreaming at Sunset is an homage to ritual, spirituality, and shared human histories. The mermaid reclines in water dotted with translucent lotuses and light waves. The setting sun in the magenta sky reflects out along the surface of the water in gold, washed highlights framing the figure. Part of a recent body of work concerning myth and oral tradition, Schahbaz’s mermaids were born when the artist emerged from a deep period of sadness. Engaging in the breadth of cultures with female sea creatures and goddesses, such as the Inuit Sedna, West Africa Mami Wata, or the South East Asian Suvannamaccha, the artist created her own myth of a woman’s gulf of tears and sadness, blessing her with a magical tail to swim the sea of her tears and find strength in vulnerability. The artist has hand-embellished the edition with a combination of watercolor, gouache, gold leaf, collaged birds and flowers, and a written blessing, making each print a unique work.
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ABOUT THE ARTIST
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Her solo shows include In My Heart a public art installation at (Rockefeller Centre 2021), Dreaming (De Buck Gallery 2020) In Solitude (De Buck Gallery, 2020), The Garden (Spring/Break Art Show, 2018), Hiba Schahbaz: Self-Portraits (Project for Empty Space, 2017), Hanged With Roses (Thierry Goldberg Gallery, 2015), and In Memory (Noire Gallery, 2012). Schahbaz has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including a recent show curated by Jasmine Wahi in Tokyo, “all the women. in me. are tired.”, at THE CLUB, as well as exhibitions at NiU Museum of Art, The Untitled Space, and Center for Book Arts; and has shown at art fairs such as Pulse Art Fair, Untitled Art Fair, Art Fair Cologne, and Vienna Fair.
Her work has been written about in Vice, Hyperallergic, The Huffington Post, Coveteur, Vogue, NY Magazine, Art Critical, ArtForum, Bomb Mag, Paper, and others. Schahbaz has curated painting exhibitions in Pakistan and India, and she was an artist-in-residence at Mass MoCA, The Wassaic Project, Vermont Studio Center, and the Alfred Z. Solomon Residency at the Tang Museum. She teaches miniature painting at the Art Students League in New York, and her work is held in private collections around the world.
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Interested in hand-embellished art? Sign up for our newsletter here!