Mar 16

Mar 16 Desi Pop Artist Maria Qamar Slays with Her First Solo NYC Exhibit

Hot Chai, 2019, Acrylic and ink on canvas, 67 x 51 in. Photo by Shark Senesac.

Pakistani-Canadian artist Maria Qamar didn’t come to play, only to slay, with her debut solo show, FRAAAANDSHIP, at the Richard Taittinger Gallery. First off, the most powerful thing about Qamar’s exhibit was the amount of Brown bodies I saw in the space during my visit. Young Brown people from the South Asian diaspora, in large numbers, all engaging, enthusing, and excited about Qamar’s art. Because representation fucking matters. Qamar is an IG art star who finally provided an IRL experience for her nearly 200,000 followers, and she didn’t disappoint with her empowering feminist messages aimed at Desi millennial womxn.

Born in Karachi and raised in Canada since the age of nine, Qamar faced bullying and racism in a post 9/11 Ontario and channels those complex emotions in her bright acrylic paintings. Qamar infuses Indian soap opera references and borrows Roy Lichtenstein’s Pop art aesthetic, but the messaging and content is pure Desi. Qamar speaks to her community directly, boldly and loudly. Qamar’s colors are shocking, visceral, and in-your-face. Her canvases contain blood reds, pretty bindis, womxn with purple skintones and silky jet-black manes. Womxn who say no to sexual harassment, womxn who aren’t afraid to slap President 45 across the face, womxn who aren’t to be fucked with. Qamar’s FRAAAANDSHIP rejects creepy dudes who slide into your DMs, stands up to patriarchy that wants to control South Asian gender norms, and promotes an urgent and accessible kind of feminism for Brown womxn.

FRAAAANDSHIP was on view from August 1, to October 6, 2019 at the Richard Taittinger Gallery.