Ammara Jabbar

*Ammara Jabar, Untitled, 2016 Performance*

Ammara Jabar is a visual artist living and working in Karachi, Pakistan.

If you are interested in Ammara’s work please contact Costanza Nizzi (costanza.nizzi@sia.edu) and Sofia Bellisomo (sofia.bellisomo@sia.edu)

Artist Statement

My work is intimately tied to the acquisition and inordinate subversion of objects found in a domestic setting and animating them using rudimentary mechanics. Resigning the domestic space as a site for inquisition into the periphery of gender and the performative; the archaeology of objects lends to a didactic view of the embedded virtues in the cataclysmic consequence of the female. Narratives and objects appropriated within my work are pertinent to the South-Asian female.

Like the grains of her rice,

strung with a lisp

wilt like her spine,

the belly of a cardamom stroked into fragrant oblivion

her skin pulled to her toes

she can't walk for all her woes

A song, for the wicked and the valiant

Rituals of intimacy and domesticity have been a point of introspection within my practice. The manifestation of my work is strung with a delirious balance of coy flirtation and guided vanity, as I enable it to perform on my behalf. Dressed in silks and beaded buttons my works sings and flutters with flawed ambition. I use objects found in a domestic setting and alter them to perform as sound/noise instruments. “The examination of order within the locality of sonorous territories allows for the introspection of sound as a vehicle for hierarchy.” The harmonics of noise and the visceral enterprise of sound become thematic cues. Like a grand orchestra of mismatched sounds stippled together like marriage band, hollering with misguided virtue and rebuttal. My work engages the poetics and polemics of domestic rituals and places the female as a point of introspection and subsequent redemption.

Artist Biography

Ammara Jabbar is a 2015 graduate from the Fine Art Department from the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture. She is was the recipient of the Imran Mir Art Prize in 2018. The Imran Mir Prize seeks to promote emerging art practitioners based in Pakistan, who demonstrate extraordinary talent and promise. Ammara was selected for the Gasworks Residency UK, in 2016. She was also part of the VASL Taaza Tareen residency in 2016, and has been part of projects, exhibitions and biennales within the city of Karachi since graduation. She recently had her first solo exhibition in Karachi. Her practice is a skillful and adroit translation of references to the domestic and performative as a means to investigate notions of gender and public space in the city, and imagining new radical futures of belonging for all groups.

(https://artelaguna.world/artist/jabbar-ammara/)

Selected Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions: Systems of a Liaison, VASL, Karachi, Pakistan (2019)

Group exhibitions: Double Tap, Museum Of Scroll, Digital Group Show (2020); WITNESS, Inaugural Karachi Bienalle, Karachi, Pakistan (2017); Stories Around Jahangir Restaurant; An artistic response to the closure of Iranian Restaurants in Karachi,Pakistan (2017 – 2018); Recorded Time, Residency at Koel Gallery, Karachi, Pakistan (2017); Gasworks Winter Residency, London, UK, (2016); TOLET; Taaza Tareen 8, VASL Residency, Karachi, Pakistan (2016); Carte Blanche, FOMMA (DHA Art Centre), Karachi, Pakistan (2016); Pehli Manzil, Curated by Muhammad Zeeshan, Karachi, Pakistan (2016)