Two-person exhibition · 2020

All That
Remains

Twelve works exploring emotional entanglement, love, sacrifice and repair through flowers and thread-like painted forms.

Dates: 10 – 20 January 2020
Venue: O Art Space, Lahore
With: Shah Abdullah
Works shown: 12 paintings, gouache on wasli

See the 12 works ↓

Catalogue cover for All That Remains, with a pale iris above a hanging root of threads — Catalogue cover, O Art Space, 2020

Artist statement

“These marks can be cherished as precious scars because they make us feel stronger and wiser. These patches still make us beautiful.”

In life, we struggle in response to several conditions without a conscious choice. We seek escape but eventually get acclimatised to all this process. This frustration leaves a permanent mark on the personality. My work is about my immersions with that conditioning and training. The feelings that cannot be expressed with words are portrayed in the paintings.

The threads show how we are entangled in the thorns of other people's expectations and the discrepancies of life. Flowers with thorns represent pleasure with pain. Silk threads in the work propose something painfully delicate yet surprisingly strong — these silky strands resemble love. But for the love to endure, silkworms eventually die.

Love denotes positivity but requires sacrifice. We can love the imperfections, the incompleteness and impermanence that leave several marks in our lives.

— Amna Manzoor, 2020