The importance of staying quiet - 6. Open Forms

19867: Ayessha Quraishi, Floor 2, oil on paper, 74.1 x 86.1 cm, 1986

Ayessha Quraishi is the only artist in the exhibition whose practice we only recently became aware of. Introduced to it by way of proximity (her drawings were installed next to Fazal Rizvi’s in Manzar in Doha), we decided to get in touch with her. Lengthy Zoom calls, during which we spoke through the entirety of her practice. We eventually travelled to Karachi to see her and the works in person and left amazed by the incredible discipline present in her practice, as well as in the way she keeps her studio. The minute attention to detail, including the tenderness with which works from across four decades have been kept and labelled, is something we have not come across commonly. Especially for someone who has worked in solitude, sequestered largely from any formal art education or commercial presentations.

This work is from 1986, and the bold, oily black lines are paralleled by a separate grid formed by the folds of the paper. In 40 years, the work has been folded in the same way many times, and the painted lines and sharp creases form a geometric spatiality with no perspective or depth. It is one of several studies Ayessha made of the tiled floor of her bathroom when she was only 15, and it becomes a critical early work in the development of her own style of abstraction and mark-making.

Something about Ayessha kept us thinking of Lala, although there is not much that can be compared directly. Maybe it is her work with material and controlled mark-making, or the idea of repetition without seeking external validation. Mostly it is about her as a person, possessing an innate quality that one picks up immediately but that is hard to describe in words.

- Floor 2, 1986

- Saira Ansari / Umer Butt