Artist Statement

In these works I seek to unravel the mysteries of cellular forms, viruses, and bacterias as they appear, disappear, and metamorphose. I put life itself under the microscope and is struck by the metaphorical possibilities of these encounters. Navigating these enigmas, I invest such forms with anxieties that threaten to engulf me. I invent conversations, skirmishes, rivalries, and alliances between battalions of minuscule forms, which become actors in these narratives. I try to employ marks in fluid ways. Some hark back to early lessons in the miniature studio at the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan. There were also hours, days and weeks of drawing line after line across the page, until its slightest nuance could be foretold and held up for scrutiny. The cellular forms in these invented landscapes/territories are defined just as meticulously.

The images take root in surfaces patched together with New York City subway maps. Although Miniature and Manhattan present two complete opposite entities, yet through my work, the city, a symbol of modernity and avant-garde is being exposed to the genre that stands for the traditional materials, historic technique and ethnic content.

Bio

Currently based in New York Talha Rathore was born in Gujranwala, Pakistan in 1970. She graduated from National College of arts, Lahore specializing in Miniature Painting. In 1997, Talha Rathore was awarded an UNESCO Bursary for young artists, and given the opportunity to take up a residency at the Sanskriti Kendra in New Delhi, India.

Political divides in South Asia strangulate cultural dialog and deprive practitioners of mutual enrichment and shared concerns; thus Rathore's experience of Delhi's milieu provided a crucial shift in perspective. Her work was chosen to be one of six artists from the six Asian countries whose works were exhibited in Honk Kong Arts Center and also presented in Hong Kong University. Rathore's work has been exhibited in Museums internationally, that includes Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan, The Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, USA, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Connecticut, USA, World Bank Art Gallery, Washington DC, USA, and in different galleries in UK, Malaysia, India, China, Pakistan, Nepal, Germany, Japan, Morocco, Canada, Dubai, and USA.