Opening – 26 APR 2024, 6-9 pm

Nadira Husain is a world observer that uses her very own alphabet of symbols and crafts slipping effortlessly in and out of regional art histories and imagery celebrating them as open sources whose sums can be blended together. Her cultural inheritance of French and Indian artistic traditions seem to continuously transcend into outer complex arrangements.

In her exhibition buti blossom at the gallery PSM, opening on the occasion of Gallery weekend 2024, textile sculptures – three ‘giants’- are born from this particular transcultural identity. They are hanging in the middle of the gallery space, like ancestral figures equipped with ceramic elements in the shape of breasts, huge feet and hands, eyes, or hearts.

Her new series of paintings told in three chapters are a synthesis of artistic styles, picturing complex interactions and different narrative levels in one work. They are multilayered, ornamental, using a strong graphic construction, and inheriting references to Mughal manuscripts, traditionally intricate illuminated miniatures rich in color and fine details.

Beyond the boundaries of a single culture, Nadira Husain always emphasizes the interconnectedness and mutual influence that occur when cultures come into contact. Her works are of a dynamic and fluid nature, a hybridization acknowledging the new relevant contemporary cultures constantly being reborn and informed via cross-cultural exchange. It is in these respective artistic dialogues not in antitheses where the stories of different cultures weave a narrative that speaks to the universal aspects of the human condition.

TEXT: Juliet Kothe