Lot 7: Do Not Get On Skin or Clothing V

TAZEEN QAYYUM (B. 1973)
Do Not Get On Skin or Clothing V
signed and dated in Urdu (lower left)
opaque watercolor, photo transfer, entomology pins and label on wasli
13 x 9¼ in. (33 x 23.4 cm.)
Executed in 2006

Toronto, South Asian Gallery of Art (SAGA), Gendering Detail: Exhibition of Contemporary Miniature Paintings , May - July 2006 Rhode Island, University of Rhode Island, Women Looking East: A Mixed Media Exhibit of South Asian and Southeast Asian Women Artists, March 2007.

THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN


"Tazeen Qayyum's playful yet ominous cockroach motif slyly invites the viewer to be both giant in front of her delicate brushstrokes, and overwhelmed by their political bite. Simultaneously compelling and repulsive, the cockroach functions as socio-political metonym rather than metaphor, standing in for the eradication of human bodies and of cultural difference in our current war-time environment. The museum/gallery display is also on trial as the cockroach/human body is splayed open for investigation like entomological specimens, produced as signs of social knowledge." (K. Phillips, Gendering Detail: Exhibition of Contemporary Miniature Paintings, South Asian Gallery of Art, Toronto, May 2006, illustrated, unpaginated)