Vadehra Art Gallery’s New Solo Show

Vadehra Art Gallery is currently presenting a solo exhibition of recent works by British–Pakistani artist  Faiza Butt, titled ‘you miss more than you see.’ The exhibition, which opened on 15 October 2024; will be on view until 12 November 2024.

What is Faiza Butt’s New Solo All About?

Faiza Butt’s practice addresses the dichotomy between culture and history, bringing the contemporary zeitgeist into focus and question with as much fervency as the historical legacies of ancient cultures. She takes inspiration from cultural iconography and traditions via a global smorgasbord and imbues them with biographical elements or psychological truths from her own life.

She has long been interested in exposing her subjects to a process of aestheticization and exploring our visceral impulses towards how images of beauty and alterity travel across time and cultures. The juxtaposition of a spectrum of elements, emotions, narratives and truths becomes a metaphor for living, framing the subject’s as well as Butt’s own multi-dimensional identity as a parent, woman, and immigrant. 

Butt often uses her children as a lens to examine the compounding effects of a technologically driven world, where notions of ‘presence’ and ‘contact’ are under threat of re-issue. As we entrench ourselves further into a third intermediary state of ‘screen time’ in various areas of the virtual world,  the cognitive binaries of ‘sleeping’ and ‘awake’ states no longer book-end our inferences and imaginations. Instead, our faculties devolve further into confusion and indecisiveness, and we grow desensitized, disoriented and disassociated, invoking our absences through technological mobility.

In this recent suite of paintings, Butt’s arrangement of modern bodies in classical poses,  inspired by the French school of painting, critiques her son and daughter’s solipsistic, askew glances as a new self-absorbed way of being. Set against historical and cultural markers of identification – from the decorative pingfeng or Chinese room dividers to the intricate, embroidered tapestries reflective of Eastern interiors, along with their gilded framing – locates these paintings between the ineffability of the past and the ambiguity of the future speculating on painting’s cyclical relationship with art history as well as the impact of globalization on immigrant culture. 

About Faiza Butt 

Born in 1973 in Lahore, Pakistan, Faiza Butt trained at the National College of Arts in Lahore and later obtained a master’s degree with distinction at the Slade School of Art in London. Although living in London, Butt’s Pakistani roots are evident in her work as she brings to our attention various social, gender and political issues faced by a young Pakistani. In the past, her work has taken a critical look at the stronghold of the patriarchal society in Pakistan and the impact of violent images, which appear regularly in all forms of media, on children. Butt’s elaborate drawings are obsessively crafted with passion and rigour and create surfaces that hover between photography and embroidery.

Her works have been displayed in numerous solo and group shows in Hong Kong, London, Karachi, New Delhi, New York, Basel, Venice, Goa, Nottingham, and Boston, among others. The artist lives and works in London, UK. 

About Vadehra Art Gallery

Representing a roster of artists across four generations, Vadehra Art Gallery was established in 1987.  The gallery’s programming takes the form of carefully curated and frequent exhibitions at two prominent locations in Delhi,  alongside art events, engaging conversations and a growing digital platform. The gallery continues to present curated projects at prestigious art fairs and institutional venues globally. They ventured into publishing in 1996, producing literature on ongoing exhibitions and artist projects.

Image – Icon 11, 8.25 x 11 in; Courtesy – Faiza Butt

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