Rumi, the famous Persian philosopher and poet said:
“Listen to the flute (ney), how it tells a tale complaining about the parting!
Saying: “Since I was separated from the cane field, my lamentation has made man and woman groan.”
This axiom implies the pathos of real love, the tradition of Ishq (True Love) that encompasses the human being in the corporeal world and launches him beyond the limitation of mortality and transience; thus Ishq is considered, by mystics, the only way to achieve immortality and fervour.
Renowned Urdu poets carried this thought and concept of frequently in their poetry, if Meer found Ishq as the mannerism of life, Ghalib labeled it as the latest incarnation of the romance we had been obsessed with, regarding God and nature.
Iqbal’s point of view regarding Ishq was nothing but the true strength and power of knowing one’s self-esteem (Khudi) that could make it as vast and deep as oceans can be, and as infinite and unfathomable as it could be the universe.
The Persian tradition of exploring Ishq has been a vital impetus behind their art and literature, apart from Rumi, Jami, Hafiz and Saa’di, all have been crafting their thoughts in the lyricism of mystical or Sufi poetry, while the same beliefs got away with it. of the tiny frames of Persian miniature painting.
Rahat Naveed Masud is the daughter of this soil that has absorbed the nectar of Sufism and Bhakti (the Hindu path to salvation) for centuries. She draws inspiration from the Persian Muslim tradition of expression through illuminated manuscripts that embody subtle sentiments with innocent symbols and impeccable detail. She could have run her fingers along the free-flowing lines of the Shahnama, Hamzanama, Kalila-o Dimma, or Sherin Farhad miniatures to immerse her paintings in the same rhythm and surge in form. While the themes of Rahat’s painting suggest that she may also have heard the anecdotal aspect of these mentioned manuscripts. However, she has her own voice and her own lines.
Rahat is not a miniature painter technically, but thematically, she can be found as mystical, as paradoxical, and as intoxicated as the Persian or Mughal miniature painters were in her day.
She is an artist of the contemporary age, an artist with a unique and precise approach to life. She has a peculiar doctrine to focus on life to extract passionate truth and rational spirituality from it, and then turn it into a visual experience through her art that can touch viewers’ wisdom and emotions at the same time. .
Considering Rahat’s earlier artwork, one can find the murmurs and peeps of fragility often associated with women from this part of the world. She has always looked at the physical and emotional world of a woman through the eyes of a woman, what a man might be deprived of due to gender sensitization or gender itself.
However, in the recent show, under the title of ‘ISHQ Series’, the painter has explored the physical and metaphysical world with an inner eye associated primarily with the mystical school of thought and spirituality.
Aside from figurative work, Rahat also exhibited some frameworks of an abstract or conceptual nature. A large painting with blue paint applied forcefully in a circular motion around a very delicately rendered golden square could lead the viewer to the quadrangular balance that Muslim ideology expresses in the concept of paradise (Jannah) or in the concrete appearance of the Ka’ aba The swirling brushstrokes, in blue, may also be linked to the circular movement of Tawaf (essential Hajj practice) in relation to the black cube; Ka’aba.
Along with abstract frames, figurative canvases were in the company of the symbols and objects that can traditionally be found in Persian literature and art. A painting titled ‘The Burning Moth’ appears to be a true expression of the centuries-old concept of a moth’s love for the burning candle, which is actually a symbolic reference to a human being as a moth for the supreme love of his Lord. . (Allah), for whom the adjective light (Noor) is widely acceptable.
Another painting in this exhibition, called ‘The Light and the Moth-2’, is found uniting the mundane and perishable life of human beings with the eternity and holiness that mortal man has always longed for. The beauty of this painting is the style and interpretation of many unspoken feelings normally associated with the woman of the East, who prefers to be reduced to ashes in love, emotions and waiting, rather than express her true miseries of loneliness and disappointment. Here, in this setting, the combination of a youthful, emotionally vulnerable woman and a fragile moth is quite remarkable. The young woman’s extended posture is not familiar from Western portraits of the reclining woman; this painting clearly shows the true attitude and position of the woman of India or Pakistan, or in a broader sense, of the woman of South Asia as she is lying on her belly with her locks of hair crossing her back over her shoulder blades while dreams, tightly captured in fists letting half-closed eyes remain empty.
The sterility of the eyes again attracts the viewer’s gaze in ‘the Deluge’ where the same young woman from South Asia and a frail woman sitting on a balcony or window are painted. In this painting, her dreams are shown, in a very artistic and conceptual deception, sunken in the deep waters of the flooded terrain in the background where only the minarets of a mosque and the tops of sunken trees are visible. In this painting, the artist has skillfully expressed the feeling of being emotionally swamped behind the torrent that surrounds him. The gold lining of the back silhouette of the woman causes the luminosity that gives a devotional touch to this frame.
The use of gold in Rahat’s paintings not only suggests a relationship of these frames to traditional Muslim miniatures, but also advocates brilliance that is directly associated with holiness and purity; light contrary to darkness.
In this exhibition, the artist also presented a video related to the title ‘ISHQ’. This video introduces the life and activities of Malangs and Darvishes at various shrines in Lahore. It was an interesting clip about the lifestyle of these self-indulgent Malang who claimed to be burning with the fire of true love or ISHQ. Interestingly, the video did not feature any women unlike the series of paintings where the image and images of women seemed central.
In 2007, at the Punjab Artists Association (AAP) annual exhibition, Rahat Naveed showed painting that was abstract in nature, which was different from the characteristic figurative work for which she was known. That was a non-figurative frame with a golden square in the center of a well-painted crimson canvas titled ‘the Square’. It was a pretty big style transformation, considering Rahat’s usual style; however, she had been inserting few geometric and floral elements and objects, which ultimately served to give a sense of spiraling continuity throughout all of her work.
The ISHQ series, seen by itself, can disorient the viewer with the force of emotional discharge that the painter has exerted in some of her frames. However, if you look at this show as the continuation of previously conceived ideology and thoughts, you may find yourself, accompanying the artist, revolving around the centripetal idea of the human longing for eternal love and eternity. Rahat Naveed’s paintings show a revolving journey from figures to portraits, from portraits to objects, from objects to metaphors, and from metaphors to forceful strokes of abstract representations.
