‘The classical configuration of the meeting of cultures is that of East and West.’1
Such formulations alter their labels with regularity. We have run through ‘Third World – First World’, ‘Developed, Underdeveloped and Developing World’, and the more recent ‘Global South and North’. The representation of geographical territories through a historical, cultural or colonization lens can often end up being reductionist and insubstantial. The multiple contexts in which the artist today lives, thinks, learns, and works calls for a far more nuanced critique of their oeuvre.
Wardha Shabbir’s practice is dense with complex cross fertilisations. It reaches back into historical processes, concurrent with lived contemporaneity. Denying the specifics of identity, yet firmly rooted in her geographical origins, Shabbir benefited from the discipline of traditional methods of art making. She was trained in the hallowed conventions of materials and methods embodied in the art of the illuminated manuscript. B.N. Goswamy once described this tradition as ‘a great floral carpet that lies rolled up, but can be spread out endlessly, revealing new things with each mellow unfurling.’2
There are echoes of this narrative in Shabbir’s painting practice, offering as it does a gentle unfolding in parts, embracing manifold natural worlds, both familiar and ingeniously imagined. This chimerical abundance is carefully orchestrated by geometric structures which insist on order in the face of impetuous beauty. The artist describes this as ‘internal logic’ in which the unfolding demands more space—expanding boundaries which in turn mutate and blur the lines of the rigid rectangle, not forsaking beauty but adding new dimensions.
The geometric order in Shabbir’s painting recalls architectural space, constructed by the artist with trapezoids, cubes and rectangles. These might be compositional devices. They could equally be mental spaces that give pause to the fertile riot of colour and foliage, creating incisive encounters, both major and minor, with rhythmic patterns and tranquil intervals. Each space is simultaneously diminutive and ambitious, mythical and representational. The renditions are flamboyant, almost phantasmagorical, yet delicately rendered. Never repetitive, always incomparable, these lyrical portraits of greenery evolved, according to the artist, as ‘each dot leads to another. As I draw and imagine, the drawing itself decides where to go as it reveals itself.’3
The city of Lahore where Wardha Shabbir was born and brought up, and in which her career was shaped, is steeped in multiple architectural legacies from the Mughal era, the British Raj and the contemporary built environment. Shabbir revels in this diversity. Once known as the city of gardens but now sadly overbuilt, it is still primarily a green city served by a canal where
citizens bathe in the scorching summer. But there is also an unexpected wilderness in some of Lahore’s parks, perhaps an archetype of the source of the artist’s visual métier. The artist remembers the era before digital maps arrived in Lahore, when she navigated the city by referring to its majestic trees more often than the street signs. The seasons of Lahore which altered the colours of its vegetation, the quality of light at dusk and dawn, have intuitively influenced the artist’s palette.
The overpowering desire to occupy space, to experience expansion in a powerful material, leads the artist to a tactile, spectacular presence. Delving deep into inexhaustible reserves of imagery, Shabbir aligns her ‘dots’ to move with purpose into the third dimension. She states it was to impel the viewer to experience expansion into both space and the overpowering forceful substance of bronze. This new form is still connected to its origins in nature, yet defiant in a new arrangement: assertive, mesmerising and fiercely beautiful. The artist in this role is the protagonist who mines both memory and contemporary consciousness, inviting them into a conversation across cultures, as demanded by visual exigencies.
The fearlessness which inhabits Shabbir’s work is unusual because of the proscribed roles assigned to women artists in South Asia. Their practices are laden with traces of compliance and victimhood. Not that gender undertones are entirely missing in Shabbir’s imaginings. The layered intricacies of flora and fauna allude to the repertoire of pattern and aesthetic ideation which are reminiscent of inherited embroidered garments. Shabbir once said all the trees in her work represented someone she had met, a ‘lived, assumed experience’.4 And there are subtle implications: some trees are firmly embedded in the ground, flourishing yet immobilized; others float free, uprooted and equally resplendent, yet independent of their environment. Shabbir reminds us of the artist’s role as a magician who has the strength to defy cynicism, gently leading us to a place of wonder and healing in a turbulent world. She fills the world in unexpected ways, signalling both change and continuity.
1 Faiz, F.A., 1911-1984, (2005). Culture and Identity: Selected English Writings of Faiz Ahmed Faiz. Ed. Sheema
Majid. Karachi: Oxford University Press, p. 49
2 Goswamy, B.N., (2014). The Spirit of Indian Painting, Close Encounters With 101 Great Works 1100-1900. Delhi:
Penguin Books, p. 3
3 In conversation with the author, February 2026.
4 https://www.forbes.com/sites/sonyarehman/2022/04/28/connecting-the-dots-in-her-beloved-city/