HONG KONG.- Over the Influence is presenting It’s Already Tomorrow, Bisma Hussain’s first solo exhibition.
Bisma Hussain’s vibrant and arresting paintings offer intimate portraits of domestic life that convey the resilience of the human spirit with extraordinary emotion and immediacy.
Born and raised in Lahore, Pakistan, Hussain turned to painting at sixteen to cope with debilitating chronic pain. On a personal and cultural level, her undiagnosed illness was met with confusion, disbelief, and denial. Her art- making practice evolved from a need to transform her anguish, isolation, and frustration into something generative, meaningful, and capable of expressing the inexpressible. By exposing what is otherwise unseen the artist both validates and champions the experiences of those suffering from invisible illnesses. “My paintings show what I don’t have the words to say.”
Hussain’s focus on domestic interiors comes from years spent confined within her home when the pain rendered her unable to leave. Bathrooms, kitchens, and laundry rooms, frame figures whose postures are contorted, constricted, and crumpled. Creating her compositions using found images sourced, she collages them together before rendering them in paint. Upholstered chairs, potted plants, framed mirrors, towels, cups, jugs of laundry detergent, and other paraphernalia of daily life populate the meticulously arranged scenes.
Hussain’s focus on domestic interiors comes from years spent confined within her home when the pain rendered her unable to leave. Bathrooms, kitchens, and laundry rooms, frame figures whose postures are contorted, constricted, and crumpled. Creating her compositions using found images sourced, she collages them together before rendering them in paint. Upholstered chairs, potted plants, framed mirrors, towels, cups, jugs of laundry detergent, and other paraphernalia of daily life populate the meticulously arranged scenes.
While her remarkable ability to portray depth, perspective, and detail lends the works a realistic quality, her stylized use of color and form pushes the paintings beyond the bounds of hyperrealism. Hussain utilizes vibrant hues to show the joy, happiness, and resilience that’s possible in the face of great adversity. Balancing the figures’ warped forms with energetic shades of Prussian blue, cadmium red, and geranium pink, she reveals the potential for elation to exist alongside grief and hope within despair. Dichotomies that mirror the artist’s own beliefs about life, health, and art.
Relying on strong emotions to propel her process, each seemingly quotidian scene is defamiliarized and estranged in some integral way that detaches it from everyday reality. In One Red Sock, a super saturated depiction of a laundry room, a heap of human forms takes the place of the expected pile of dirty clothing. In both 8 am and In a Sec, familiar moments in a morning routine are disrupted by figures rendered headless by sweaters in the process of being pulled on or off. While in Is it Tuesday Yet? and Ask me Tomorrow, solitary female forms appear to be in states of collapse, in I call dibs and Shades of Brown, the figures are restored to standing by the support of an accompanying female form, a nod to both the ideals of sisterhood and the artist’s two biological sisters. This juxtaposition of known and unknown solicits a deep and profound engagement from the viewer. Beneath the silky-smooth veneer, one cannot help but see themselves and their own private burdens in reflection—an effect that is heightened by the absence of faces and the presence of universally recognizable objects.
While the individual works present complete stories in and of themselves, when viewed together a larger narrative emerges, one that is capable of holding the multitudinous nature of human experience and the full range of human emotion.
Bisma Hussain (B. 1995, Lahore, Pakistan) is driven by her personal experience with chronic pain. Her paintings offer intimate portraits of domestic life that convey the resilience of the human spirit with extraordinary emotion and immediacy. Rendering her figures and interiors in a vibrant super-saturated color palatte. Hussain’s works champion the place of joy, healing, and hope in everyday life. Painting since she was sixteen, Hussain received her Bachelor’s in Fine Arts from the National College of the Arts in Lahore, Pakistan.
