An up-close and personal with art curator and artist Mehreen Hashmi, who portrays her life and her journey of surviving repetitive sexual abuse as a child through her art, curatorial practice and vlogs.
Mehreen Hashmi is an independent visual artist and curator from Pakistan. Born and raised in Karachi, she has graduated in Bachelors in Fine Arts from Indus Valley School of art and architecture in 2009. Mehreen Hashmi is an artist and an art curator. She has been the curator of the Karachi Art Summit 2017 and reviews art from a curatorial perspective in the magazine Nigaah, a South Asian art publication. Her work has been displayed in local arts galleries as well as internationally including Australia, Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. She has various exhibitions on her curatorial venture. Recently she has received ‘Art Commendation’ award from Dawood Foundation. She has been curating exhibitions in collaboration with Culture and Tourism Department, Government of Sindh and promoting local artists’ work.
10 years ago, I was not allowed to do my final thesis as it was on a topic that wasn’t spoken about openly. I wasn’t allowed to exhibit my artwork in Pakistan. And then a couple of years ago, I started sharing my voice on social media and things changed quite a bit.
Digital and social media are playing a positive role and have opened up many possibilities; giving us many individual platforms. Years ago, one had to go to an organisation to speak and even then, there was not much choice. I have personally found that technology helped me voice my thoughts and reach out to thousands. Being in a “global village,” we are connecting to each other locally and internationally in order to talk to each other. The common goal is to put an end to all of this.
It is perhaps social politics and taboos that break down voices. There comes a moment when people need a platform they might not have had before. Known to be bold and outspoken, this particular artist is well-known in the art circle in Pakistan. I wanted to understand more about her story, her healing process and the advice she gives to others through her paintings and talks.
To separate the artist from her background and her life would be a folly. Her childhood trauma has not prevented her from establishing herself successfully. Her story marks the resilience and the determination of a rape survivor to beat all odds and then speak about it.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CAzP-ZkJJ02/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Hashmi’s work is a narration of her emotional struggle being a survivor of sexual abuse. It is a statement about psychological and emotional impact of abuse on children, as well as adults.
“Social taboos do not allow women as well as men to raise a voice about their sufferings which makes it more suffocating. We don’t have a way out of this because we don’t have any one to listen or understand ” – Hashmi
People try to put you under a category of “bad girl” if you don’t conform to their ways. But we are human beings and we don’t fade away. We are going through the process of emotional struggle and physical trauma every day.
