A legacy in art: Aphra and Anwar Jalal Shemza
Feral Horses recently added Aphra Shemza’s compelling light installation Composition X to its catalogue (you can check it out here).
This multidimensional work is given even greater depth when considering Aphra’s artistic relationship with her grandfather Anwar Jalal Shemza, an artist also interested in abstract and geometric compositions.
East meets West
Anwar’s artistic interests and output were closely tied to his international experiences: growing up in Kashmir, studying in Lahore, and moving to the United Kingdom for further study and a career in teaching.
His early efforts in art were primarily in modernism and geometric abstraction, drawing inspiration from Hindu and Mughal styles (his grandfather ran a carpet business in Lahore, which no doubt exposed him at an early age to traditional designs and patterns). He was a founding member of the modernist Lahore Art Circle and quickly established himself within Pakistani culture not only for his paintings but also novels, plays and poetry.
Anwar’s interests were challenged when he arrived at London’s Slade School of Art; it was here that he confronted an apparent Western bias against Middle Eastern artistic traditions. Following a lecture in which a tutor — the art historian Ernst Gombrich — explained away the entirety of Islamic art as ‘purely functional’, he was so discouraged that he destroyed all of his works completed in the UK to date.
He went on to explore alternative means of expression, which led him to such artists as Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee. While this might have seemed an acceptance of the Western style, what’s clear from the works that followed is that this was actually an evolutionary step towards fusing Western and Eastern influences and so creating an entirely new modernist approach.
For example, Anwar’s Meem series in the 1960s uses Mondrianesque linear and two-dimensional elements to represent the initial of the prophet Mohammed (meem or ‘m’). He engaged further with Islam’s rich history of calligraphy in his Roots series, depicting ornamental, script-like lines and shapes, and The Page, one of the last works before his death in 1985.
A dialogue through art
I think there’s a striking parallel between the geometric elements of Aphra’s Composition X and other works, and those of her grandfather — especially the interplay between symmetrical and asymmetrical forms.
Yet there’s also a connection at a conceptual level. Just as Aphra references Kepler’s Platonic Model of the universe in Composition X— a groundbreaking scientific model but one still heavily influenced by faith in God’s will, and His manifestation in the ‘divine purity’ of geometry— so too did the Islamic artistic tradition evoked in Anwar’s works seek God in art.
Many examples of Islamic art include repeating and interlocking patterns of floral or vegetal designs (also known as ‘arabesque’), which were often used to represent the transcendent, indivisible and infinite nature of God. Indeed, Aphra very effectively touches on notions of infinity and divisibility through use of mirrored surfaces in Composition X.
I would say there’s an active artistic dialogue between Aphra and her grandfather; she seems to be exploring, reacting to and challenging his art and ideas, which takes on a greater poignancy considering she was born after his death.
Significantly, Aphra’s use of new media and techniques — notably, Composition X’s sensor-based interactivity — takes this dialogue in exciting directions; just like Anwar, she too combines the past with the present, from both a personal and historical perspective. I can think of no better way to continue an artistic legacy than this.
