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Art Beat

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Textures and subtle colours, so much so that they dissolve into insignificance –a decorative trace. This may indeed be an admirable reversal; where the face, that clichéd signifier of the emotions, has taken second lead to gradations of tone – which actually express more. Yet what they do manage to express is extremely subtle. Some borders, some finely etherealised symbols and some colour combinations are quite lyrical and manage to intimate things that might merely become prosaic in speech. That perhaps, is Mehers greatest success, that she has moved away from the image as we know it, too delicate atmospheres and evocations that insinuate themselves into the mind after courting the subconscious. Meher has been careful not to detract anything from this kind of transcendental communication by giving any indication of a time or place in her pictures. Instead, we have elusive suggestions that take us to the arid Red Indian plains, Africa, South America, Australia or deep in a dreamscape. Only the sensitive viewer will pick up these invitations to fly off into the realm of the imagination. Stand back and see a face, stand close and go beyond the looking glass. Mehers exhibition is not an indication of an artist finding her roots in any part of the world. It is instead one of the finest expressions of artistic temperament itself: it with-draws from the outside world, to a world that exists within all of us. Collective unconscious, pre-civilisational murmurings or mystical imagination, call it what you will, in Meher Afroze, Pakistan has found a true artist.