n the mid-eighties, a visitor to Salima Hashmi’s house would find a few pots holding large rubber plants. Varying shades of green, some with reddish streaks, a few of a lighter hue, almost lime-yellow, the leaves twisted and turned downward but were arresting in their visuality. At the time, one couldn’t imagine that beyond their physical placement on the floor, their presence in Salima Hashmi’s art would last longer. The journey of a plant to a motif on the canvas becomes a passage toward a metaphor of resistance. It also implies the structure of Hashmi’s aesthetics, disclosing its two sides: blood and beauty.

Repeatedly viewed during her retrospective at the COMO Museum of Art in Lahore, the exhibition Dast-i-Tah-i-Sang – titled after a book by Faiz Ahmed Faiz – presents a selection of works spanning six decades. A vast number represent various phases, from her student years at the Bath Academy of Art, Corsham, UK, and the Rhode Island School of Design, USA, to what was produced in her studio, in multiple techniques and scales; primarily engaging in a dialogue between the maker and the audience, as well as with the medium itself.

A retrospective is a rare opportunity to see an artist’s work collectively, but more importantly, to grasp a recurrent theme that runs through it like a creative person’s signature, the “figure in the carpet,” according to Henry James. In a few words, it is about giving voice to the dispossessed, across gender and class; defying violence, whether domestic, state or international; and incorporating hope and salvation. The objects on display include pencil and marker drawings, oils on canvas, collages and mixed-media work, alongside black-and-white photographs.

This mosaic reveals Hashmi’s passion for humanity, justice and freedom of speech. One recognises references to state oppression, especially Zia-ul-Haq’s dictatorship; ZA Bhutto’s death sentence; police attacking political workers, hitting women protesterss and other acts of cruelty that destroyed our social fabric.

A number of symbols, internalised by Salima Hashmi, appear in works from different eras. For example, the rubber plants, lilies, monsteria, other flowers, creepers and vegetation. These ordinary, ignorable entities emerge as signs of resilience: growing against unfavourable conditions, pushing forward (Untitled, 1980-85), occasionally turning grey (Absent God V, 1989) and even bleeding in places (Friday Morning, 1980, and Untitled, 1983). This substance later lent itself to an atmosphere that engulfs spasms of a devastating nature. Paintings such as Storm Approaching, Floating Worlds IV and Red Monsoon II open a window of content, puncturing the surrounding commotion. Some of the tiny works from this group, not in their size but in sensibility, remind one of miniature paintings (Window Scape 1 & 2, 1990).

The presence and power of the atmosphere are tools in Hashmi’s hand. A maverick of images, she creates the solidity of a scenario, an external and detached sensation, received, felt and absorbed internally, leading to diverse interpretations. One, probably the most plausible, indicates the political situation of the country by employing a visual component: hands, pulling, slipping, stained, depicting an organ, the most instrumental in transforming sapiens into humans. A painter makes images with hands; a critic writes about them with hands. Hands are crucial for fabricating devices which enable a person to increase bodily functions and further the capacity to manufacture innumerable objects. Hands also serve to survive and to struggle. In our culture, the emblem of the stretched palm represents the struggle of Imam Hussain (with whom Allah was pleased) against the then ruler of Syria. The hand also signifies labourers and workers, and parties which support them; hence the exhibition’s title, which literally translates as ‘hand under the stone.’

A hand that battles with autocrats can become a vehicle of repression, too. Police pick up batons to beat protesters, bullets are shot at unarmed crowds. Hands also tie the ropes around the neck of a sentenced individual. All of this appears in Salima Hashmi’s art. Women reclaiming their rights being targeted by police sticks; circles of law-enforcing men above defenceless people. Snapshots of women agitators near the Lahore High Court, facing police oppression, an image that has acquired iconic status. So is the subject of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s death. Hashmi, in one canvas, returns to that juncture of our history. Installed next to an Urdu daily announcing Bhutto’s execution is Untitled from 1979, it comprises a partially torn newspaper page showing Bhutto’s picture, next to the print of a large hand clasping a mechanic’s monkey wrench and cone, along with a newspaper cutting of the Urdu word Aaj (today) encircled in dark brown. The frightening forehead and sinking eyes of the despot and the numeral 5 erupting from the middle of the canvas add meaning to the pictorial construction (Bhutto was hanged on April 4, 1979).

Hashmi’s defiance of the autocratic regime appears in another, stronger scheme. The military dictatorship was hell bent against women - from the Hudood Ordinance to restricting their public appearance and participation. Works of art with women’s bodies, especially nudes, were banned from galleries. So were dance performances at state-controlled venues. During that period, Salima Hashmi used her sensitive rendering to construct a sophisticated strategy for resisting outside pressure. Besides drawing clusters of faceless women in purdah (Alive in My Time, 1980-85), she depicted a number of bare bodies, actually a regular subject in art schools; however, the substance was layered with streaks of thin, translucent and floating colours. Thus, you identify the forbidden stuff amid the layout of rooms, details of a familiar structure, in a sense, bringing the prohibited entity back to the comfort of home.

Her observation is not limited, however, to one period; it examines the past of the republic. This is illustrated in a pair of 1974 paintings titled Sohni Dharti, which depict women wailing helplessly with their hands spread out. In a number of mixed-media works called A Poem for Zainab (1995), the artist has added a facsimile of her face, with a piece of cloth tightly strapped across her mouth. Not only making herself speechless, but also unable to scream or call for help. The series, superimposed with marks resembling blood drippings, crimson slashes, irregular gashes and strokes of dark grey, refers to a case of domestic violence reported in 1994 where a woman from Kahuta was subjected to horrific torture by her husband.

Looking again at Salima Hashmi’s oeuvre, one realises that politics remained the core of her expression. Rather than being impatient, however, Hashmi negotiates with her subject in a tone that extends and immortalises its reality. Engaging with the work on display, it becomes clear that she transforms harsh matters into content laden with the traditions, aesthetics and nuances of art-making, so that the work endures and does not lose relevance after its point of reference disappears.

A few works from the retrospective feature the artist’s old photographs with her illustrious father. They point not just to a bond between father and daughter but between two creative people speaking a similar tongue, though in varying accents. Faiz Ahmed Faiz responded to the tyranny of his times with a syntax coated in classic diction; Salima Hashmi approaches her turbulent age through the tactility of pictorial language.

One of the painting by Salima Hashmi from her retrospective is called Two Loves I (2008), possibly a reference to the poetry of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, especially the poem called Doe Ishq; that in one part narrates his love and sufferings for a human person, and in the second, for the entire society. It concludes with the couplet: Iss ishq na uss ishq peh naadam hai magar dil / Har daagh hai iss dil mein bajuz daagh-i-nadamat (One regrets neither love in the end; the heart bears many a scar but no embarrassment).

*Dast-i-Tah-i-Sang opened on September 12, 2026, and runs until January 31, 2027.

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 contacted at [email protected].