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A Profile, tribute by husband Yusuf Agha

Yusuf Agha | July 30, 2012 | Newsline Magazine

The early ’70s, following the break-up of Pakistan, were years of political turmoil, but there was an artistic vibrancy in Pakistan. In Karachi, some artists had formed a group to wrest control of the Arts Council from the hands of its bureaucracy and similar rumblings were being felt in Lahore. The great Gulgee was painter to kings, the prodigal Ahmed Pervez had returned and was his usual noisy and cantankerous self. There were galleries opening and shutting down — Bashir Mirza had closed his, but Ali Imam was opening up another. Sadequain had returned from his sojourn in the desert. Poets and artists mingled, and people were writing about art.

It was around this time that Lubna Latif, as she was known then, walked into the art scene and made her mark. A student of Rabia Zuberi’s Karachi School of Art, she had won several awards, including the Ghalib Gold Medal for her watercolours. But it was her solo exhibition at the Arts Council in 1971 that created a stir — a 22-year-old girl had filled the vast hall with several totally abstract images. She was the pioneer female painter for this kind of non-representational abstract art in Pakistan.

In the following years, she went on to win the second prize at the National Exhibition for the Arts. After that, there was no looking back. She painted and exhibited in Pakistan every couple of years. Her murals adorn the walls of the Habib Bank Plaza. Prolific in her work, almost everything she painted, sold.

But Lubna had captured more than the imagination of art patrons and lovers. In those days, I wrote features for the Herald and often met Lubna at inaugurations and other cultural events. After a few meetings, I too succumbed to her charms. When I qualified for the Civil Services and was posted to the academy in Lahore, I frequently bunked classes to take the night train to Karachi for short visits. Lubna was often surprised as to how I turned up ‘by accident’ at places she would normally frequent. Soon I was posted as Assistant Collector of Customs in Karachi. I proposed marriage to her, and she accepted.

The ’70s were also the years that shaped the English magazine industry in Pakistan. The Illustrated Weekly of Pakistan gave way to a new-sized colour magazine, the Herald — the precursor of Newsline. Guided into existence by S R Ghauri and Razia Bhatti (thenBondrey), few people know that Lubna was the art director who gave the magazine its original character and layout.

Those were the days of type-setting and Razia and Lubna and the other late-night, galley-fixing, chai-drinking crew worked overtime to get the magazine to press. We were blessed with two beautiful children, Aurangzeb and Diya. Lubna thoroughly enjoyed working with the Herald team and a few days every month I had to put the children to bed when she arrived home in the early hours of the morning when the magazine was being put to bed.

Years later when we moved to Boston, I learnt of Razia’s death. Razia and I had been contemporaries at Karachi University and I was greatly saddened. That bleak evening I picked Lubna up from her assignment as art director in Quincy, Massachusetts. As we drove home together, I broke the news to Lubna; she was so devastated I had to pull the car over to console her. I’ll never forget that day.

The latter half of ’70s were also years of turmoil. Bhutto had unleashed a new awami culture and Zia-ul-Haq after him was trying to shape it in his own image. Corruption had become rampant. Interference in the work of public servants was the order of the day. At one time, the governor of Sindh blocked my posting to favour one of his own. I had a personal run-in with President Zia and several with his Martial Law administrators at the airport where I was posted.

It also didn’t pay to be an ‘honest cop.’ I opted for deputation to PIA and Lubna and I had the opportunity to travel to Europe and America. We would end up in different countries in all seasons, staying in small hotels or with friends, eating sandwiches for lunch so that we could spend our money on gallery admissions! Lubna continued to paint and exhibit all through this time.

02Lubna_Agha06-12 Lubna Agha with her family.

When my deputation ended, I decided to pursue further studies in the United States. With two children in tow, we moved to student-housing in Sacramento, California. Lubna immediately obtained work in a photographer’s studio to help support us. She took evening classes in printmaking at the university. And how she painted! The Sacramento years in the ’80s were memorable years for her — she had solo and group shows. She often returned to Pakistan to exhibit her work.

Her style underwent several transformations over the years. From the totally abstract, she moved to the figurative abstract, with several style variations.

In the 2000s, we travelled to Morocco and Turkey, and Lubna found herself fascinated by the old world of abstract Islamic paintings. She painted minarets, domes, muqarnas, motifs, calligraphy and lattice work in her own style. She painted each piece with thousands of individually crafted dots of paint — large pieces, small pieces, specially designed wood-worked rehels, doors and huge canvases.

She saw her new imagery as a contemporary answer to the “challenge posed by the immovable qualities of traditional Islamic art and artifacts”. She wanted her work to “provide a vibrant and ephemeral experience of two contradictory themes — infinity and oneness.”

In Sacramento, she established her own one-person graphic design company, Imagemakers, and turned it into a thriving business that catered to clients like Intel and Jeopardy. Later, working as a full-time art director at various world-class companies like Polaroid, she managed to find time to paint for hours, every day. Art was always her passion and she took it seriously, painting till the very end of life.

But art was not the only thing that filled Lubna’s life. Family came first. She protected and guided her children like a mother lioness; she and her mother were best of friends; she was the go-to sister for all her sibling’s problems; she was the love of my life.

Lubna was actively involved in charity acts for the poor in Pakistan. A regular donor to the Edhi Foundation, she also financed building homes for two families, taking them out of hutments and into homes with electricity and water. She bought two families auto-rickshaws, helped set up another family with a fabric shop, and funded over 150 Kiva loans for entrepreneurs. Even in her last weeks, she was busy setting up another working woman in a home of her own.

Another passion of hers was reading. She read for a few hours every day, at least four to five books a month, and often a few at the same time. She listened to music of every flavour — ghazals, old Indian songs, modern Pakistani singers, classical European music, and everything in between. She had over 2000 songs in her iTunes collection, each heard over and over again. She had also heard Iqbal Bano, Farida Khanum, Medhi Hasan, Abida Parveen and Nusrat Fateh Ali, live, several times over. She loved western music concerts, theatre productions, the movies and television.

She loved nature and took long walks, exploring areas on the East and West coasts. Travel was her passion. We travelled to England, Scotland, Holland, France, Morocco, Turkey and Saudi Arabia (for Umra). A family trip to Spain had been planned for the fall this year. We visited many galleries and museums of art, landmarks, palaces and shrines.

A Sufi at heart, she loved to visit the saints of yore — this year we had planned to visit the Grand Chisti in Ajmer. A previous trip — visas and all — to India was thwarted by the attack on the Taj Hotel. We had visited the other shrines many times — Data Sahib in Lahore, saints in Karachi and Sindh, and even Morocco.

03Lubna_Agha06-12A few times we took cross-country trips. In Pakistan and in the US— from Karachi to Abbotabad in the ’70s and then again in the ’80s, and from California to Massachusetts in the ’90s. She loved the sea; we explored beaches and deserts, the Grand Canyon, Lake Tahoe and camped overnight under a star-lit Sequoia Forest sky. She kayaked in deep lakes without knowing how to swim!

A designer at heart, together as a family we redesigned and repainted our apartment and our son’s fixer-upper home. She would map out built-in cabinets and have carpenters create them to her specifications. Every wall had to have picture railings so that there were no nails to damage them for her frequently changing paintings.

She designed and often stitched clothes for herself, her daughter and all her nieces. When there were marriages, her creativity was in great demand. She designed jewellery and had her patterns executed for family. My daughter’s wedding was orchestrated down to the last petal — Lubna would have it no other way. She found time to be a wonderful full-time wife, mother, grandmother, daughter, sister — and friend.

As an art director, she was a natural. She had a command of all the major design software — Quark, Photoshop and a dozen others. She used portrait software to convert photographs to give them a painting-like effect for professional photographers. She was an avid photographer herself, and took thousands of photographs of family and sceneries wherever she went.

In January 2011, what was to be a simple outpatient procedure for Lubna, resulted in the detection of cancer in the abdomen. Two major operations and a severe session of chemotherapy followed. The beast within was unrelenting. Doctors tried to convince her to go for further chemo, but she would have none of it. No more brutal medical assaults on her person. She would face the brunt of the demon on her own terms.

She continued to paint for hours each day for an upcoming show, featuring the Islamic motifs she had adopted — motifs which she recreated from her own perspective — abstract and beautiful. Several of these paintings have been incorporated in the US State Department ‘Art in Embassies’ programme, international museums, and she appears on several websites featuring Muslim talent.

She strove hard at her work. Even while she was in pain a few weeks ago, the doctors were spell-bound at how she went ahead with the exhibition of over 30 new paintings at the Gardiner Art Gallery in Oklahoma in February and March this year.

The show was curated by the Asian art historian, Professor Marcella Sirhandi. Lubna was feted at numerous receptions and lectures, and she participated in a marathon Q&A session about her work. She never showed that she was in pain from the cancer. Her courage would not allow that.

In April, the cancer became unbearable. Doctors recommended hospitalisation but she was steadfast in that she would fight the battle — in her own home, surrounded by her loved ones, her art, her books, her music.

Whoever said there is no dignity in death did not know Lubna. She was a warrior to the end. And when she breathed her last, the weather in Boston, which had witnessed incessant rain before and after, radiated sunshine on her final day on this earth.

Like my children and I, Lubna’s family and friends are devastated by her passing. She had so much more to offer to her loved ones and her art. There were weddings planned and loving grandchildren to see grow. She had sketches and plans for dozens more paintings. She spoke of her new Islamic motifs as an endless treasure trove from which she could paint for years to come.

Lubna loved life ferociously. In one of her last emails to Jalaluddin Ahmed of FOMMA, she wrote: “The important thing I try to remember is what a blessed life I have had. As for going from this world — this is the only most tangible and beautiful thing we know. One is never happy to leave even if we were to live to be a hundred!”

Lubna Agha's art

December 24, 2006

Dawn

EXCERPTS: Different strokes

A monograph capturing the artistic journey of Lubna Agha.

Lubna Agha

Marcella Nesom Sirhandi retraces Lubna Agha’s first few steps into the world of art.

As a young girl, barely into her teens, Lubna Latif knew she wanted to be an artist. She was born in Quetta in 1949, and the family moved about in Pakistan during her youth. Her father was a customs officer in government service, posted first to Sargodha, then Multan, Lahore and Landi Kotal. They finally settled in Karachi in 1961 when Lubna was 12 years old. A few years later, Lubna enrolled as the first student at the newly formed Mina Art School in Karachi. She went to public school in the morning and took art classes in the afternoon. When the art school became accredited and changed its name to Karachi School of Arts, Lubna dropped out of high school and became a full-time art student. Her parents resisted at first, but soon relented and fully supported her decision. Lubna elected to forego high school graduation and earned a diploma from the Karachi School of Arts instead …

Soon after Lubna started classes at the Mina Art School, she was joined by another girl and then her own sister. In all, there were seven or eight students working in close relationship with the teachers. The structure of the programme was like an apprenticeship for the students who had been taken under the wings of their teachers. There were definite advantages being part of a small group in a fledgling art institution. Lubna and her classmates got a great deal of attention from Rabia Zuberi, the first principal of the art school and co-founder with her sister Hajra. Mansur Rahi, another of Lubna’s teachers, became principal in 1965. Based on his university background and artistic experience, he refined the curriculum, renamed the institution Karachi School of Art and in 1969 married Hajra Zuberi. The faculty comprised a unique combination of geographic backgrounds and artistic expertise ...

Lubna’s artistic abilities were recognised during her art student years. In 1966, the year before graduation, she received no fewer than five awards. The watercolour portrait of a beauty in the manner of Chughtai won her first prize. Hajra Zuberi’s influence was apparent, but the difficult technique of overlaid washes and subtle colouration attested to Lubna’s commitment of mastering the medium. In addition of classroom assignments, Lubna and her classmates went to Bohri Bazaar to paint street scenes and architecture. They always attracted a crowd and the occasional amateur critic who commented on size or colour or verity of similitude!

An accomplished landscape panorama, Under the Golimar Bridge, one of hundreds of assignments undertaken during Lubna’s four years in art school, reflected the influence of teacher Mansur Rahi. The strong outlines and rhythmic configurations that characterized Rahi’s own highly stylized figurative motifs were evident in Lubna’s landscape.

Lubna Agha

She has groped her way through the stages of work, dealing with the insecurity of taking artistic risks. She has pondered what it means to be a mature artist, asking questions such as how long she should stay with a style or whether nature can be a source of abstraction and non-figuration.

These two examples of student art, pristine in execution and diverse in style and subject, reflected the curriculum and philosophy at the Karachi School of Art. Students were required to learn techniques of all fine art media. They were expected to sample a diversity of subject matter as well, from figures and portraits to landscapes and still lifes. Above all, the young artists were steeped in draftsmanship ...

Lubna Agha

With a programme dedicated to mastering the basics, the Karachi School of Art boasted phenomenal success for its graduates, particularly in commercial and graphic design careers. Lubna was the first graduate to make a name as an independent artist. In 1967, the year she graduated, Lubna held he first solo exhibition at the Pakistan-American Cultural Centre. Reviews in newspapers commented on the diversity of media and subjects seen in the 70 works which were exhibited. There were watercolours and ink paintings, pencil drawings and woodcut prints ... There was realism and abstraction and several very meticulous and skilled anatomical studies. In addition to making her own art, Lubna was teaching at the Central Institute of Art in Karachi. Two years later her life and her art changed dramtically.

Lubna Agha

As a mature artist, Lubna sees clearly where she has been and says frequently that all the work that went before has led her to this new phase. It is a culmination of her artistic life to the present time. “A lot of work has been personal in nature. However, I feel the seeds of my imagination come from the soil of my birth … My recent work explores the beauty of my Islamic roots.” Finding those Islamic roots has become paramount to her as she embraces the artistic heritage of Pakistan and Muslim culture. In the intense colour and rich pattern seen on the rehel, she embraces meticulous craftsmanship and design. The joyous colours show her complete involvement in her new work — it is making Islamic art and architecture personal. She has foresworn the speed of the 21st century, choosing instead time-consuming, labour-intensive devotion to historic practice. Each daub of paint relives for example, the process of a craftsman beating on a piece of metal, both in the physical action and in the historic concept. Each stroke becomes important because it represents the physical act of making.

Lubna Agha

What Lubna has accomplished is remarkable because she achieved fame as an 18-year-old girl, at a time when there were so few other important women artists in Pakistan. She has groped her way through the stages of work, dealing with the insecurity of taking artistic risks. She has pondered what it means to be a mature artist, asking questions such as how long she should stay with a style or whether nature can be a source of abstraction and non-figuration, without these parameters having been established in her native country.

Her current work reflects the new freedom which Lubna feels. She has long since established herself as an artist, she has raised her family, and she has overcome the difficulties inherent in living in the United States, away from her native land. Her recent travels in Morocco and Turkey opened her eyes to the common heritage Islamic countries share. While each is unique in its own right, she recognises the commonalities of architectural forms, patterns and cultural objects. This allows her to reclaim overlooked objects of Islamic culture and give them a new life. The yearning she felt for deeper spirituality in her life is particularly embraced in this new work.

Excerpted with permission from Lubna Agha: Points of Reference By Marcella Nesom Sirhandi Foundation of Museum of Modern Art (FOMMA) in association with East-West University Press, Chicago Available with FOMMA, Lakson Square, Building # 2, Sarwar Shaheed Road, Karachi-74200 Tel: 021-5698110 fomma@hotmail.com ISBN 969-8896-01-5 70pp. Price not listed

Marcella Nesom Sirhandi has a PhD in Asian art history and teaches the subject at Oklahoma State University in the US. Her first book was titled Contemporary Painting in Pakistan. She is currently working on a book on new miniature painting in Pakistan.

Lubna Agha II

The diaspora syndrome

By Salwat Ali

Today a considerable amount of contemporary art belongs to artists located in the Diaspora. As a practicing artist, Lubna Agha was painting her diaspora years before the term gained currency and acceptance that it now enjoys. A Fomma monograph, ‘Points of Reference’ by Marcella Nesom Sirhindi traces Agha’s aesthetic evolution and progression of her stylistic shifts but it is the soul baring details of her dislocation that bring grip to the volume.

The early years of Agha’s emergence as an artist are fairly well documented and viewers here are familiar with her white paintings but in 1981, along with her family, she moved to Sacramento, California, USA where she went through the second most important change in her artistic life. Here, after serious engagement with organic abstraction so central to her white paintings, she returned to figuration. Ali Imam had called Lubna, “an artist on the run, passing from phase to phase” but in Marcella’s text we are able to discover the reality behind the shift.

Artists are intimately associated with their immediate environment and Pakistan for Lubna was home where she was settled with her family and had friends, relatives and a successful career as a practicing artist. Sacramento was a strange new environment where the family had to make ends meet on a limited budget in cramped housing amongst strangers. “A life that was whole became fragmented” and Lubna, overwhelmed by the displacement, poured her heart out into her canvases.

Marcella narrates an incident where well known California artist Wayne Theibauld on viewing her figurative painting questioned “Why are none of your figures grounded? To which Lubna responded “I recently came from Pakistan and don’t have my bearings here yet. It’s a metaphor.” But there was more to this painting called ‘Tree of Life’ than just the lack of gravity.

The author writes that, “Her nudes were not just carefree spirits but in the grasp of an inner turmoil. Some covered their faces while others were upside down and floating. Their gestures and postures symbolized difficulty in adjusting to their surroundings. The imagery reflected Lubna’s own personal discomfort in her new home. The tree was nature, the reliable constant she had always clung to. It also represented her heritage.”

Other works of the same period like ‘Doli’, ‘Roots’ and ‘Falling’ went beyond personal dislocation to allied sentiments like nostalgia, longing for home and addressing of personal suffering through cultural statements and socio political critique pertaining to homeland issues. The most telling among these was ‘Three Days’, Lubna’s expression of the three phases of life pertaining to birth, struggle for existence and death. “The foetus and umbilical cord were the connection to her cultural heritage, the continuation of life and thread between generations. The chevron — designed trees harboured roots that provided further connections to her homeland, family and friends.”

Incorporating computer language into the painterly exercise is a common feature now but as early as the mid 1990s the Mac11 influence was manifest in Lubna’s oil painting with the computerized phrase ‘Fragmentation Disintegration’ super imposed over the painted surface.

Lubna Agha’s art was a product of her peculiar situation, a Muslim in a western environment. It manifested influences of a life dominated by career advancement, technological developments in art as well as a deep sensitivity to global politics and its affects on the Muslim population worldwide and in the subcontinent. Paintings like ‘Sarajevo’ and later the Ja-namaz series, especially ‘Ja- namaz and the White House’ and another with McDonald’s Golden Arches and still another with the IMF logo were very direct interpretations of this phenomenon.

Her current phase ‘Infinity and Oneness’ is a far cry from the cubist abstraction, semi realistic figuration and extensive recourse to symbols from nature that she formerly played with a serious intent and purpose. Lubna’s new work is defined by a desire to translate Islamic religious and cultural heritage with a fresh vision. Marcella writes that the “fresh vision had less to do with iconography and design than with process and craftsmanship.” Even though the narrative element is entirely absent from the chromatically vibrant visuals in the Infinity chapter they still have a passionate eloquence about them.

Agha is an artist with tremendous emotive capacity and Marcella Sirhindi captures this with due sensitivity in her monograph. The artist’s absence from the Pakistani art scene is also reason enough to read the volume. It completes an unfinished picture.