Wish
Mona Kamal, Screen of Wishes, 2001, mixed media.
12 January - 9 February, 2002
WARC Gallery. 401 Richmond St. W., Suite 122, Toronto
curated by Corinna Ghaznavi
Opening reception: Saturday, 12 January, 2-5pm
Artist/curator discussion: Saturday, 12 January, 4pm
Wish explores issues of location, culture, and identity through fragments, glimpses and interior landscapes.
Mona Kamal's Screen of Wishes is a textile installation of re-knotted threads sewn to create an eight-foot panel of fine netting. This is hung against the backdrop of Kamal's mother's sari, worn at her wedding. The piece was inspired by a Muslim shrine in the ancient Mughal city of Fatehpur Sikri where visitors tied bright pieces of string to a marble window screen, making the object appear as a vibrant piece of fabric. The window was transformed into screen and this into a symbol of people's hopes and dreams. Kamal further transforms this by abstracting the window into narrow textile panels which give space both to her own wishes and dreams, and allows the visitor to glimpse evocative forms through and in the knots casting shadows onto the sari behind.
Pamila Matharu presents a series of mixed media works held in hues of black, white and grey, entitled Urban Clarity. We catch glimpses of a train or a scrap of a sign, as seen through the eyes of a transient in a large urban centre. Understood as recreated dreams from fragments of memory, the images are highly personal and evocative. How does one mark one's place in a city one is simply passing through? How do the images of that city imprint themselves on us and form experience? What is real, what is memory? How does memory relate to the way in which we construct meaning and identity?
Tara Sabharwal's earlier work was located in the worlds that she came from, revisited, and remembered. As her own worlds shifted she became more visitor than member to these places and sought to claim her own space, within herself. Her images became those of home, body, vessel; outlining both the desire to be contained and the drive to escape to freedom. Carefully balanced, the monoprints are a product of contemplative layering of surface and meaning as the artist negotiates a place between home, community, and culture on the one hand, and carving one's own place on the other.
These programs are made possible by the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council.
