HUMA MULJI :: BIO :: MAIN :: BIBLIOGRAPHY

Looking at the absurdities and conflicts of living in an urban society in transition, of 'living 200 years in the past and 30 years in the future’ simultaneously, my works broadly address the visual and cultural overlaps of language, image and taste that create the most fantastic collisions. Looking at this phenomenon with formal and conceptual irony and humor, the works are surreal juxtapositions of images. Rather than dwell on existing theoretical issues of living and working in a post-colonial country, the work for me is research into the realities of living in Pakistan.

The works also explore the possibilities of “making” in Pakistan, of the conflicting availability of low-tech methods of fabrication, together with exquisite traditional crafts; materials and forms that come from another time, or those that are “imported”, “newly discovered” or “re-appropriated”, often discovering stunning design solutions, for everyday design problems. Arabian Delight plays with ideas of travel, transition, and movement of goods and ideas, both legal and illegal, but also of the unacceptable, forced Arabisation of a south Asian country like Pakistan, away from its regional identity to a deliberate, religious one with the Middle East. The camel therefore being twisted and awkwardly forced into the suitcase.

Collisions of the present and the past, collisions of geographical distance and proximity, global exchange of taste, culture, ideas in contemporary times, to an otherwise lopsided society, both economically and socially, also occur in Heavenly Heights, and Housing Scheme, addressing urban development and a happily assimilated general discord.

The newer works Crystal Palace and Twisted Logic, made of mirror and glass, questions notions of certainty in a time where much else is illusion and a reflection of something else. The faceted mirror mosaic, reflects its environment, where the edges of the object disappear. It invites the viewer, multiplies their image, splits and crops it, questioning notions of truth and illusion. This disorientation, where a mutant, epileptic minaret, is at once a large origami bird, and an abstract form of failed architecture, removes the certainty of truth. Other similar works recently, also employ glass and mirror, often broken, questioning the veneer of gloss of urban life, and revealing its fragility and vulnerability. The works investigate notions of beauty and its proximity to horror, within the current scenario of conflict in the environment. Ultimately, the works are always approached from the point of view of an inhabitant of the site.