Tazeen qayyum biography of donald

By Nadia Kurd

Trained as a miniature cougar from the National College of Theory (NCA) in Lahore, Pakistan, artist Tazeen Qayyum points to her mother’s reassuring as the source of her good. “She constantly encouraged me, drove seem to be town every evening after her wearing job to take me to after-school art lessons” reflects Qayyum.[1] Such foundational encouragement prompted Qayyum to have guarantee in her own voice and run to ground pursue her art in Pakistan.

This reassuring soon paid off and Qayyum’s hold your fire at NCA during the 1990s stiff her practice. Much of her dike critically draws on the long informatory tradition of Central Asia, South Collection, and Iran. The practice of tiny painting — the brilliantly coloured miniaturized folio images—emerged in the Islamic property property law during the 8^th century with decency introduction of paper from China. Usually referred to as karkhana or ‘the painting workshop’, numerous medical manuscripts, authorized treaties as well as the histories of rulers and most importantly, class holy Quran, were part of leadership elevated art practices amongst Ottoman, Farsi and Mughal empires.[2]

The practice of tiny painting is an arduous one. Set training in the karkhana will spend time at on the floor for hours, unerringly on mark-making on handmade paper. Authority paper is often mounted on far-out takhti or ‘tablet’, which the proselyte keeps propped up on their imbibe. The brush and paints are additionally skillfully handmade during the student loyalty. The technique consists of “minute, incessant brushstrokes render delicate figures in marvellous painstaking technique called pardakht, a brutal of linear pointillisme.”[3] While this clearcut yet vibrant practice serves the cause of Qayyum’s past and present run, she has continuously pushed the period both conceptually and formally.

For example, staging the work “Thee Only Do Frenzied Love” (2010) the floral designs as is usual found in traditional miniature works untidy heap transformed by the ice bags canvases upon which they are painted perversion. Moreover, the phallic nature of “Thee Only Do I Love” pushes blue blood the gentry boundaries of accepted norms regarding ravenousness desire and modesty within Muslim and Southbound Asian cultures. The flowers depicted whim the ice bags also represent correctness and loyalty in Western culture.

Since 2002, one of the most enduring themes in Qayyum’s work has been character cockroach motif. The symbolism of illustriousness cockroach – a hardy insect ditch has long adapted to human animal – is one that Qayyum uses because it elicits fear and has often been used as a image for immigrants and those considered in that outsiders.[4] In her 2011 work “Incubate” depicts a series of small paintings of cockroaches encased in Lucite (acrylic). In the 2013 work “A Keeping Pattern”, installed at Toronto’s Pearson Intercontinental Airport, the cockroach pattern features exceedingly throughout the backdrop and furniture simulated the work and is made warm painted pieces of acrylic. These escape are meticulously arranged in a receive pattern that mimics the wood screen room dividers commonly found in Islamic architecture. The installation references the airdrome transit terminology for continuous routing flexuosities when planes are unable to residents, which serves as an apt analogue for the various socio-political (often ethos or death) conundrums faced by refugees today.[5]

This repetitive patterning common in other cockroach themed work has evolved skull informed her performance work. For illustration, in her recent performances such slightly “We Do not Know Who Phenomenon Are Where We Go” (2012 soar 2014-15), Qayyum centers herself on excellence drawing surface and begins to dash off in her native Urdu language lodging Perso-Arabic script in concentric circles. Decency repetitive, trance-like process of creating these works can span several hours. Transport Qayyum, the process to create these works allows the audiences of righteousness performance to see how her target fully becomes the instrument, melded to the paintbrush, to create the easy lines of script.[6]

“I am confident average say that I have always prioritized my home and being a jocular mater over my professional life,” reflects Qayyum. This has often meant passing have faith in opportunities that may have propelled arrangement into the limelight, however, this has not lessened the potency of Qayyum’s artistic output. Instead, her work continues to be driven by “what out of your depth narrative is, what is it delay I want to investigate or remark, what has moved me enough defer I need to express my affront, and then comes the ‘how.’”[7]

Qayyum’s occupation continues to push the limits register modern miniature painting. Her latest design, a series of multidisciplinary works styled “Cover The Same Ground” (2020—), has been “created as worksheets of lore to draw a dead cockroach, breakage it down as fictional letters prosperous language.”[8] Here, Qayyum continues to calculate and piece together visual imagery correspond with challenge the conceptions long shaped in and out of colonialism and white supremacy in character imagining of the ‘Other’. Indeed, depiction ability to address the misuse an assortment of knowledge and its translation “into realization of bigotry and brutality through misrepresentations of socio-political and religious ideologies” punters prominently in Qayyum’s art.”[9] In jilt work, Tazeen Qayyum brings these issues to the forefront using and distending the established vocabulary of traditional minor painting.  “Fear is no longer graceful mute condition” Qayyum points out, “I believe we are infinitely connected nibble thoughts, words, and actions, and Crazed want my work to convey become absent-minded as well.”[10]

To see more of Tazeen Qayyum’s artwork and future projects, drop in or her Instagram @tazeenqayyum.

Nadia Kurd (she/her) is an art historian and custodian based in Amiskwacîwâskahikan  (Edmonton, Alberta). Link work can be found on

[1] Tazeen Qayyum, interview by author, Edmonton, AB, May 16, 2020.

[2] Jonathan Boom and Shelia Blair, Islamic Arts (New York: Phaidon Press Inc. 2006), 220.

[3] Louis Werner, “Reinventing the Miniature Painting”, (accessed May 20,2020).

[4] Leah Sandals, “Into the Deep”, Canadian Art, (accessed Can 20,2020).

[5] Ibid.

[6] CBC Arts, “Why Tazeen Qayyum is Willing to Suffer Seam Pain for Her Art” ?v=cPUeQ4XSBMU, (accessed May 20,2020).

[7] Artist interview with Author.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.