AYESHA JATOI | ARMIES AND FISH

Acquired from The Citizens Foundation Art Auction, Milan, 2019

“Miniature Painting or the Manuscript is integral to my practice. The relationship between the image and the text in the open pages of a manuscript is a major source of inspiration. I revisit references to it time and time again while simultaneously questioning traditional modes of constructing images today. My work immediately after my training in the genre was mostly reflecting on art making itself and my relationship with this rigorous traditional practice. So though my own work is not medium specific - a hybrid in fact - the training in miniature painting and calligraphy continues to play a very important role in conceptual framework of my practice.”

Ayesha Jatoi quoted in ‘Ayesha Jatoi: Multiple Ways of Interventions, From Miniature Paintings to Public Spaces’, Art World: 11th Shanghai Biennale Special Issue, Shanghai, November 2016

Pakistani artist Ayesha Jatoi was trained in Miniature Painting at the National College of Arts, Lahore. The current lot is from a body of Jatoi’s work which explores and reconceptualises the established connection between words and image in illuminated manuscripts. In these works, Jatoi boldly separates text from image, using textual description in place of visual illustration. These minimalist, diagrammatic works are an original and arresting reimagining of traditional iconography.