Intimately powerful, the art of Pakistani-American artist Ambreen Butt combines complex narratives of feminist views and global political ideas while reflecting the anecdotal circumstances of a Muslim person living in the US. Classically trained in miniature paintings, known as musawwiri, Ambreen's work features the traditional heritage of Indian and Persian art juxtaposed with contemporary Western methods of painting and sculpture.
The work selected for collection twenty-four, Namaloom (Untitled #4), 2020, which means 'Unknown' in Urdu, is an example of work chosen from the series "Say My Name," created between 2017 and 2020. The print Namaloom represents the dichotomy of the beautiful and broken, lightness and darkness, the negative and the positive, and the representation of the unknown becoming known. In contrast to the darkness, the juxtaposition of the 24-karat gold leaf in the original artwork symbolises light, glory, and preciousness, infusing the print with a sense of vitality and hope. Amidst the uncharted territories of the unknown, gold represents the resilience of life and the potential for knowing discovery and enlightenment.
In Conversation with Ambreen Butt
For nationally renowned Pakistani-American artist Ambreen Butt, the complexities of a broken world are not to be forgotten — they are to be examined in an evocative way that encourages thoughtful reflection. This notion is expressed in all of her work, which fuses the classical techniques of musawwiri (miniature painting) with contemporary Western art forms. READ.
