Amina Ansari-An artist's portrait of a country on crossroads
Amina Ansari-An artist's portrait of a country on crossroads
Amina Ansari
An artist's portrait of a country on crossroads
This not just a portrait of two well known faces from the Indian subcontinent. As one can easily recognize both the faces painted here in a myriad of colors, the faces that are known for two completely different notions of humanity.
This 6 feet huge portrait represents the dillema of a country that is at the croosroads. A country that has to find it's way between the dogma of terrorism that is eating into the fabric of the world today and the path to humanity
where sufferings are detected, treated with compassion and finaly cured.
The two altogether different faces of universal truth. The truth that stands tallest of all the religions and faiths mankind has ever come across on our very special blue planet the Earth.
This is the portarit of two men Abdul Sattar Edhi and Osama Bin Laden done by an acomplished artist Amina Ansari of London.
Who is Abdul Sattar Edhi?
Abdul Sattar Edhi is a prominent Pakistani philanthropist, social activist, ascetic and humanitarian. He is the founder and head of the Edhi Foundation.
Who is Amina Ansari?
Amina is a girl born and brought up in London. As a little girl she had the priviledge of being introduced to two strakly different cultures. Developed west of High class British standards and the crass third world country Pakistan, that is of her ancestral origin. And as the luck would have it, she imbibed the best from both the cultures in her life and work.
Amina Ansari, the little girl is a grown up woman today, an established artist, playing with the canvas and oils to fulfil her inner urges and showcase the world her emotions and reflections of the world she lives in on the daily basis, through her own, very personal limitations tagged along.
She studied at Central Saint Martin’s, London College of Printing in London and National College of Arts in Lahore and has two paintings at Windsor Castle’s in a collection to mark Her Majesty the Queen’s Jubilee."
Her latest creation, this portrait of two world famous men questions you staring straight into your eyes- 'Him or him?' It aks you to chose between the two. The saint or the devil.
Amina met Abdul Sattar Edhi in london a few years ago at an event. And as a stern believer in fate she found a definite reason soon enough in this encounter too. She discovered that this encounter indeed was an unfailing storytelling in the passage of her life.
In her own words,
"One could see the Artist here as lavish with full of colours in many forms, it could be living loud in life, striking attention, or for those to recognise the 'Sufism' but when Edhi and my eyes' met, I felt it was a communicating thoughts directly, without speech. The questions of how colours speaks, how practicable plan functions and how emotions were intact. Thousands of thoughts were emerging at that very moment which left me speechless. The humaneness remained untroubled in his state of mind, words cannot describe the bedazzled yet blackened soul of mind-kind. On one hand, I somehow felt responsible and on the contrast, at a tender age, I felt just anesthetized, but looking back you realise that small moment with Edhi just left a design in my psyche today."
Today as she has moved her base to Lahore in Pakistan and she gets to glance at Edhi Ambulances and services around Pakistan, it just crosses her mind how developed his work is now and yet he is still moving with only two set of clothes.
She further adds,
"Again, I look around me and often see madhouses of either extremes or careless individuals, when it comes to portrayal of politics, religion or humanity and its so easy to pen a paper without having to endure or witness a mankind from East to West."
This contradiction of possibilities and cataraction of ideology forces her to paint what she does. The emotions, the idology, the pathways, the lack of vision among the people at large.
In her own words,There is never an education on its own in order to go forward in life or for forward thinking. It is also about the practical and spiritual knowledge and needs.
Amina has to her credit many more works of art. Yet this portrait where she asks a huge question as to ' Him or him?' stands apart from all of that.
