Almine Rech is pleased to present Hiba Schahbaz's first solo show with the gallery, on view from February 23 to April 8, 2023.
Morad Montazami, Hiba Schahbaz or the profane pleasure of sacred myths
Hiba Schahbaz’s artistic education, which was certainly anchored in a certain technical and ideological tradition in the art and miniature schools of Lahore, cannot and should not be resolved in a single environment but rather through contact with the history of Western painting, which she cultivated at a very early age through reproductions in books. The fact remains that the young Pakistanis of her generation who studied in the 1990s and 2000s in Lahore or Karachi schools were always subject to an academic framework, not to mention a rigorous orthodoxy. This framework assigned the role of voicing political and social problems, often from a nationalist perspective, to painting, rather than that of exploring the stirrings of the female body in all its sensuality. It is understandable that Hiba Schahbaz's unbridled fidelity to the female nude, from her childhood to the present day, has not come without its challenges.
- Morad Montazami, director of Zamân Books & Curating