aintings come in all sizes, shapes, colours, formats and frames. Beyond the physical frames made of wood, metal or vinyl, there are conceptual frames that surround and define an object. Human beings are accustomed to looking at works of art, as well as elements of nature, functional objects and decorative pieces, through the lens of content, context and meaning. Hence the convention of naming.

There is hardly a single object in either our real or imagined worlds that exists without a name or description. Even divinities, mythical figures, supernatural creatures and metaphysical ideas are identified through particular titles and terms.

The relationship between reality and our understanding of it often assumes different forms, especially in art. Makers of images frequently present one thing while suggesting another, leaving viewers to recognise or overlook the clues they provide. As a result, a work of art may be approached through the lens offered by its creator, but it can also generate multiple interpretations, some of which the artist may never have intended.

Looking at the latest paintings of Farishta Mirza, an exceptionally talented graduate of the National College of Arts, Lahore (2025), the viewer is inclined to look beyond the surface. Her canvases depict the people of Quetta, particularly members of the Hazara community and, more specifically, those from underprivileged backgrounds, engaged in ordinary and seemingly unremarkable activities.

These paintings, which form part of her solo exhibition, An Evening (August 2-11, 2026), at Numaish Gah, Lahore, portray a section of society conditioned to survive in an existence it has not chosen. The fear of death, the possibility of disappearance and the reality of dispossession are facts of everyday life.

Since her student days, Mirza has been painting her “people” in a variety of settings and circumstances. Although I never taught her and knew nothing of her work at the time, I happened to come across one of her paintings hanging in the studio of a fellow artist. When I inquired about it, I was told that it had been painted by “some third-year student from the Department of Fine Arts.”

More than the composition, its elements or its subject matter, it was a rare quality that caught my eye and held my attention.

One does not encounter such an artist every day: an emerging painter naturally endowed with the gift of rendering an image with ease, assurance and apparent effortlessness. In the painting I first saw, Mirza, through a series of deft brushstrokes, had portrayed a man travelling on public transport. Her manner of painting transformed the figure: from flesh into paint, from substance into thought, from the ordinary into the extraordinary. It was a transformation that appeared to occur almost beyond the artist’s conscious control.

Most viewers may still assume that Mirza has deliberately chosen to confine her painterly world to the ethnic community from which she comes. Her purpose, however, is neither to evoke pity nor to turn suffering into a spectacle. Rather, her approach to both painting and the lives of a persecuted community in the Islamic Republic remains notably unsentimental.

Whether she is arranging pictorial elements, mixing pigments on her palette or applying layers of paint, her gaze remains steady and detached. At a time when emotional immediacy has become a readily marketable commodity, especially among artists from the same community, Mirza’s refusal to surrender to easy sentiment distinguishes her work. It also reveals the independence and intelligence that lie at the heart of her practice.

Yet her subjects remain much the same: figures clad in familiar clothing, engaged in similar activities and immersed in the same light. This consistency regularly attracts criticism from contemporaries, competitors and viewers, many of whom argue that the artist has remained unchanged, not only in her choice of subject matter and palette but also in her technique and materials. It also prompts a larger question about the necessity of change itself.

Today, the demand for novelty has become almost a commercial strategy, among artists who move from one canvas to the next, presenting a new technique, theme or style with each exhibition. The practice, aptly described as putting old wine into new bottles, resembles the seasonal production of updated models designed to create the appearance of innovation.

Farishta Mirza, however, continues to return to the same world. The work displayed in her solo exhibition portrays men, women and children who remain unaware of the presence of the viewer and are absorbed in the routines of everyday life. Two boys play together; two young men dance while holding cups in their hands; a young girl studies her wristwatch; another appears to be waiting for someone – a mother, a sister, a friend; perhaps a stranger. Elsewhere, men place garlands around the neck of a pilgrim returning from Hajj; a blue-eyed child gazes directly ahead; a bespectacled young woman holds a cluster of flowers; a mother stands behind her three sons; men and boys sit in silence; groups of women gather together; solitary figures rest in corners or secluded spaces.

None of these canvases really requires a title, though the artist has provided one for each of them, no doubt in response to the pressure exerted by galleries and the art market, where every work is expected to carry a label. Yet Mirza’s art unfolds as a continuous narrative, retold each time in a slightly different register.

Her work reminds me of a meeting with Jamil Naqsh in 1997. During that youthful period of ignorance, often accompanied by a certain boldness, I asked the great painter whether he had not grown weary of painting nude women and pigeons and why he did not turn to something else. The master, running his fingers lightly across the leaves of a nearby plant, replied, “I have been painting this as well for years. Once I learn how to paint it, I shall move on to something else.”

A similar quest echoes through the work of Farishta Mirza, which repeatedly returns to the people closest to her. The word closest carries its full meaning only for those who know the young artist personally, since the paintings contain no clear indication of place or relationship. The only clue to the artist’s affinity with her subjects emerges subtly: her deliberate choice of colour.

Every canvas and every figure is rendered in varying shades of blue and grey. These dominant hues spread across the surface, interrupted only occasionally by patches of vivid scarlet.

Both the chromatic scheme of blues and greys and the exhibition title, An Evening, reveal the artist’s position. Through this darkened world, punctuated only by traces of red, she portrays a community singled out because of its ethnicity and beliefs.

The writer is a visual artist, an art critic, a curator and a professor at the School of Visual Arts and Design, Beaconhouse National University, Lahore. He can be reached at [email protected].