City, sorrow and pain: Abbas reflects life at Istanbul exhibit

Already well known for her works that were presented at the Istanbul Biennial, Hamra Abbas is back with a new exhibition in Istanbul that reflects her way of thinking about cities and people.
“Cityscapes” is Abbas’ first personal exhibition and will run through July 17 at Outlet (İhraç Fazlası Sanat).
The photographic works of the Pakistani Abbas were realized in Istanbul, including a new video by the artist. Abbas’ works engages with “traditional” narratives and motifs, often in a playful manner.
By appropriating culturally loaded imagery and iconography, and transforming them into new works that are experienced in space and time, she creates new platforms from which to view notions of cultural ownership, tradition, exchange and power.
“Cityscapes” is a series of photographs of Istanbul’s iconic landscape. However, in the images, the landscape is deprived of its essential element that gives the city its history and its character.
This project was developed after the recent minaret crisis in Europe and especially after Swiss voters’ approval of the ban on the construction of minarets.
For a long time, minarets have been perceived as symbols of political Islam in the Western imaginaire. As for the Muslim world, minarets hold a wider significance that encompasses cultural, social, and aesthetic dimensions as well.
Abbas invites the audience to view minarets as repositories of poetic memory that keeps the present both anchored and pulsating.
The artist was awarded a jury prize at the Sharjah Biennial 9: Provisions for the Future in 2009. Abbas’ work was included in the 4th International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Baku, Azerbaijan; the International Artist’s Workshop of the 2nd Thessaloniki Biennial; the 2nd International Incheon Women Artists Biennale, Korea (2009); the Guangzou Triennial (2008), the 10th Istanbul Biennial (2007), the Sydney Biennial (2006) and the Cetinje Biennial (2004).
Her work has also been exhibited at the V&A Museum, London; ifa Gallery, Berlin; the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto; the Asia Society Museum, New York; the San Francisco Art Institute; and the Pacific Asia Museum and REDCAT, California.
Abbas has also been awarded residencies and scholarships by numerous institutions. The artist lives and works in Boston and Islamabad.

Cityscapes, which is seemingly an ordinary collection of touristy photographs of Istanbul, is made truly ordinary by removing one element that upon first glance generously gives away the city’s character and history.
Each shot taken at an early hour of the morning is embedded in a narrative that invites the audience to imagine waking up one morning to find the city changed overnight, literally.

In the Muslim world, minarets are part of the wider socio-cultural and aesthetic framework, standing above the winding alleys below, as they are silent spectators to the bustling market places around, listening from the heights to the daily conversations of the multitudes scattered on the ground. One may imagine that the minarets of Istanbul are its memory organs that allow the city to recognize itself at each sunrise.
The removal of the minarets set aside, the three panoramic photographs of Istanbul showing the Golden Horn area from different angles are technically superb pieces in themselves, according to Abbas.
“I normally collaborate with people who know the technique a bit better than I do. In this case I asked Serkan Taycan to work with me for this project, as last year he worked with me on another side project called ‘Paradise bath,’” she said, adding that each photograph is made out of 24-25 shots taken very early in the morning.

Abbas is a powerful artist on reflecting pain and despair as well, professionally drawing attention to terrorism and its effects. Abbas has been successful in transferring cultural and daily events to her artwork.
One fascinating work is a portrait of Aafia Siddiqui, a neuroscientist from Pakistan accused of being a member of al-Qaeda by the U.S government. It is an image that many have seen on the Internet, television, or in the print media.
Siddiqui received her PhD from one of the world’s top university, MIT, and is now serving time at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York.
The scientist was named a suspected terrorist after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In 2003 she disappeared in Pakistan after numerous reports indicating she had been taken into custody by Pakistani security forces and the FBI. She reappeared five years later when she was arrested in the Afghan province of Ghazni, allegedly with documents related to terrorist activities.
While in custody she was shot by FBI agents in an incident in which it was claimed she had picked up an assault rifle and aimed it at them. She was subsequently tried and convicted in the U.S. only on charges related to that incident, rather than any terror-related offenses. Many questions remain about the time she was missing and the reasons for her original arrest.
“I was intrigued by this particular photograph of Aafia standing beside the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in her graduation robes on a bright sunny day, with a bundle of flowers in her hands, a smile across her lips,” Abbas said.
“A stark contrast to the prison uniform she is probably now compelled to wear. The landscape in the picture is at a walking distance to where I currently live. It is this close proximity to my current home in Cambridge that made me take up Aafia’s portrait. Keeping in mind the existing paradox inherent in the image, there was almost nothing I could really add. Hence, I simply recreated the image as faithfully as I could using the painstaking and almost meditative techniques of miniature painting, and left it, Untitled.”