This week, You! takes a look at Meher Afroz’s dynamic artistic journey, which spans over 50 years…
art
The comprehensive retrospective of Meher Afroz - held jointly at Alliance Française de Karachi and Chawkandi Art Gallery and Curated by Niilofer Farrukh - is a rare occasion to revisit, reflect upon, and re-experience over 50 years of her artistic journey. Featuring paintings, prints, videos and installations, the show offers a sweeping view of the many phases of her career, each marked by memory, displacement, identity, spirituality and social commentary.
From Lucknow to Karachi: A Life Marked by Movement
Born in 1948 in Lucknow, India, Afroz completed her Fine Arts degree (with honours) from the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Lucknow, in 1971. Soon after, she relocated to Karachi. This shift - from the cultural milieu of Lucknow to the evolving cityscape of Karachi - informs much of her practice.
Meher Afroz’s artistic evolution is marked by a remarkable diversity of mediums and methods, each chosen to deepen the engagement with memory, history and emotion. She first gained recognition as a printmaker, creating collagraphs and etchings with richly textured surfaces. Over the years, she embraced painting and mixed media, layering washes, pigments and handmade paper while maintaining a tactile, almost sculptural approach to the surface. For Afroz, mark and word are inseparable; she often inscribes verses, slogans, or single words in Urdu, bringing poetic introspection, collective memory and social commentary into her compositions.
A Visual Language of Memory, Spirituality and Time
Across decades, Afroz has developed a distinctive visual vocabulary. In her works every stroke, layer, mark and texture is deliberate, each carrying symbolic weight. What might appear minimal at first glance becomes deeply resonant on closer viewing, inviting the viewer into a meditative, contemplative space. She layers surfaces - sometimes using printmaking techniques, other times painting, mixed media or text - as though each work were a manuscript or a visual poem. Through texture, form and minimal but evocative imagery, she engages with themes of identity, memory, loss, time and spiritual longing.
Four Thematic Filters: The Retrospective Unfolds
The retrospective organizes her oeuvre into four thematic streams, each revealing a dimension of her experience and sensibility:
‘Seenah ba Seenah’: A tribute to the courage and strength of women confronting colonial and systemic power.
‘Azaad Shehr ki Ghutan’: Captures the experience of arrival, dislocation, isolation and the search for a voice.
‘Dastavaiz’: Reflects creative and moral resilience in the face of social and political crisis.
‘Sukoon aur Saraab’: A contemplative investigation into spirituality, inner peace, illusion and transcendence - probing the dualities of body, soul, memory and time.
This curatorial structure traces not only the evolution of her technique and medium, but also the shifting contexts of her life: from personal memory to collective history; from cultural nostalgia to social conscience; from introspection to spiritual and political engagement.
Art as Memory, Resistance, and Spiritual Mapping
More than aesthetic exercises, Afroz’s works serve as archives of memory and identity - personal, cultural and collective. They document experiences of migration, loss, nostalgia and social upheaval; yet they also affirm resilience, compassion, spirituality and hope. Her layering - be it texture, colour, inscription or symbol - functions like a stratified history, articulating multiple realities. In doing so, her art becomes a space where past and present, individual and collective, the outer world and the inner self converge. In this retrospective, viewers are invited to traverse these layers: to perceive not merely forms, but pulses of time.
Legacy: Artist, Educator, Mentor, Cultural Activist
Alongside her practice, Afroz has served as a teacher, mentor and cultural custodian. She taught at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture (Karachi) and previously at the Central Institute of Arts & Crafts, influencing generations of Pakistani artists. She is also a founding member of ASNA, an organisation dedicated to building synergy between contemporary art and artisanal practice - showcasing her commitment not only to art but also to heritage and cultural craft. Her influence as an artist, cultural activist and educator extends far beyond her canvases. Her legacy is woven through her students, through institutions she helped shape, and through a rich body of work.
Why This Retrospective Matters
At a time when the world seems increasingly fragmented by migration, conflict, cultural erasure, displacement, this retrospective of Meher Afroz is not only timely but essential. It reminds us that art can function as memory, as testimony, as spiritual refuge and as a political act. Through textures, marks, words and symbols - often minimal yet deeply evocative - Afroz crafts universal narratives rooted in personal history. She bridges generations, geographies and sensibilities. She shows that even after decades, layers of memory can still speak. For readers and art lovers, this exhibition is a rare opportunity to revisit not only an artist’s life and evolution, but also to engage with history, identity, loss, longing
and hope.
*The exhibition is on till 17th December at Alliance Française de and Chawkandi Art Gallery, Karachi.
Photo credits: Razin Rubin
The writer is a creative practitioner and researcher. She can be reached at [email protected]
