Art, for Tarab Khan, an author, and painter, is an opportunity to escape from reality and create a new world of possibilities. This underlying theme binds her paintings on display at Museo Camera Centre for Photographic Arts in Gurugram.
“I don’t depict life as it is,” says 39-year-old Tarab from Hyderabad, as she walks around, explaining her paintings at an exhibition titled, At the Gates of Talbosh.
Two dozen bright and colourful paintings, a mix of metaphors and symbols, take visitors through a fascinating journey into the imaginary world of ‘Talbosh’, a word coined by Tarab. “In each painting hangs a tale, some inspired by fables that have stayed with me since childhood,” she says. There is one that takes a cue from William Wordsworth’s ‘Lucy Gray’, “while few others depict my moods”, she adds.
Talking about one of the canvasses that shows cascading clouds and rivulets of bright colours, she says she was inspired by the symbol of smoking pipe from Rene Magritte’s famous painting, This is Not Pipe. Tarab has used the three pipes as an “allegorical image” similar to Aladdin’s magical lamp, that takes people into a new world.
Zebra is another powerful symbol extensively used by Tarab in her paintings to communicate different ideas. ”With its black and white stripes, I interpret the animal as a symbol of co-existence of duality. In one frame, she portrays a colourful reflection of the zebra and its surroundings and explains, “this is how we might be deep within ourselves at times, which could be different from our external facade.”
One among eight artists from the around the world to showcase her work at Bengaluru’s Sublime Galleria in 2019, Tarab says her paintings are separate entities that take their own form and impacts viewers in more than one way.
“A profound painting has deep impact, and imagination-driven, dream-like paintings inspire. That is why you will find most of my paintings depict the characters as though escaping from the present mundane world to a new world where magic is waiting to happen and and the possibilities are in abundance,” she says.
(The exhibition is on at the Museo Camera Centre for Photographic Arts, Sector 28, Gurugram till February 12)
