self, family, and the environment
Process
This project explores my relationship with my environment, specifically growing up with my mother and grandmother as strong female role models and their experiences with traditional gender roles and constraints.
Self + Environment
I began the project experimenting with various ways that I can represent how my environment has shaped me.
This painting is a watercolor self-portrait, inspired by the style of Agnes Cecile. The motif of leaves growing on and around me represent the impressionable and stubborn effects that the people around you and your surroundings can have - the lasting effects of nurture vs nature.
At the time I was working on creating this project, I was in a very turbulent and stressful period of my life. I was facing a lot of pressure, most of which came from the environment that I was in. Much of the work reflects these emotions.
Quick watercolor studies with a layer of blue leaves drawn on tracing paper
The blue leaves are a nod to blue willow china plates, correlated with the notion of domesticity.
Introspection
Pressures from my environment have left me feeling lost, stressed, and anxious often times; this painting represents that state. Inspired by artist Antony Micallef.
Pressures on Women in Pakistani Society: Domesticity and Gender Norms
My mother married my father in the middle of finishing medical school - due to her getting pregnant a year in, she decided to not pursue becoming a doctor and instead became a stay-at-home mother.
I experimented with representing the societal pressures women face by painting my mother on various plates and dishes - symbolic of the domestic life that they are expected to follow.
The Blue Willow pattern seen on china plates and porcelain struck me as another symbol for domesticity that I wanted to blend with the image of my mother.
The Domesticity of Woman
Visualizing the responsibilities of domestic life and the gendered expectations on this image of my mother
My grandmother was also someone who had traditional gender roles imposed on her, yet she made the decision to defy these societal pressures for the better.
Choosing to be a single mother and raise her son alone in Pakistani society where this was very uncommon was not only brave but incredibly respectable. She used her education to get a job as a professor of history at a local university, which she then used to provide for my father.
The motif of blue leaves appear again to demonstrate the pressure of returning to a domestic life creeping in and around her. It was not easy for her to make a choice so opposite to what was expected of married women at the time, yet her ability to choose what’s best for her and her son regardless of social pressure is incredibly inspiring.
