Nimra Bandukwala is an emerging visual artist and community-engaged arts facilitator. She was born and raised in Karachi, and has lived in Italy, England, and Canada over the past decade. She has facilitated visual art and craft workshops with adults, seniors, and children of various ages and abilities. She holds a BA in Psychology from McGill University, with a minor in world religions, and a MSc in Occupational Therapy from the University of Brighton. Her art has been published in VICE Canada, Living Hyphen, and Rungh amongst other publications. She is co-lead of Reth aur Reghistan, a multidisciplinary arts project exploring Pakistani folklore, sculpture, and poetry.
As Guest Curator at Minds Eye Studio Art Gallery and Yoga Studio, I am pleased to present Nimra’s work at the gallery from January 29th to February 26th. Kinesis is defined as a nondirectional movement of an organism or cell in response to a sensory stimulus. This body of work was created over the past five years and was inspired by the theme of movement. Physical movement from living and traveling within different countries and communities. Psychological shifts in ways of thinking and being from being part of these communities. Nimra has been painting and crafting ever since she can remember. More recently, she has been creating her own art materials with rocks and plants to explore colour from the landscapes around her. Some artworks were inspired by microscopic worlds that we cannot perceive with our eyes, but that influence everything we do. Other pieces imagine ways of co-existing harmoniously with nature including plants, fungi, coral, animals, skies, and seas. In an era of constant divisiveness on political, social, religious, and personal levels, her art dreams of communities that embrace the unknown and find ways of moving from fragmentation to wholeness. Many of these pieces are moving meditations. She invites you to slow down, look, and notice what you are seeing. What feelings and associations come up for you? What stories, experiences, or dreams are brought to the surface?
Private viewings for kinesis are available, and the artist reception will be held on February 24th at 7:30 pm. RSVP here. Nimra will also be leading a silk scarf bundle dyeing workshop in the gallery on February 25th from 2-4 pm. In this workshop participants will explore using colours from kitchen waste to bundle dye silk. You will learn about the processes of mordanting cloth, preparing dye materials, techniques to bundle dye cloth, and aftercare of naturally dyed fabrics. At the end of the workshop, each participant will have a beautiful bundle dyed silk scarf to take home. All materials included! Register here.
“The idea of kinesis comes through as movement – moving out of these fragments and into wholeness. I like that it includes the word “kin” as I play with the idea that plants, fungi, cells, stories, histories, cultures, humans, we’re all immersed in the same system, and we’re constantly in relationship. ”
You say that your art dreams of communities that embrace the unknown and find ways of moving from fragmentation to wholeness. I love that. Can you expand on how that concept and theme comes through in the art?
My artwork depicts figures in relationship with each other and with the worlds around them. I try to blur the me vs. you and us vs. them boundaries that we as humans are constantly putting up. I feel that these boundaries end up separating and fragmenting us from each other and from the natural (and built) environment. The idea of kinesis comes through as movement – moving out of these fragments and into wholeness. I like that it includes the word “kin” as I play with the idea that plants, fungi, cells, stories, histories, cultures, humans, we’re all immersed in the same system, and we’re constantly in relationship.
One of the things I love about your work is that you see new elements each time you look at a piece. Is this layering something you have in mind when you start to create a piece?
This style of painting echoes the idea that nothing is ever just one thing. And that the deeper you dig, the more complexity and nuance there is within that. I love hearing about how others perceive my art. For example, a South-Asian woman at the print shop saw “Origin” as the womb of a woman, which was beautiful to hear, as I had painted it with a very different concept in mind. I like that through layering multiple imagery, the artwork becomes living and evolving.
Origin
Many pieces in this exhibition feature female figures. Who are they meant to represent?
Most of my meaningful connections, friends, mentors, and teachers have been women. We are three sisters, and I grew up in a house with my mother, grandmother and aunt, whom I have a very close relationship with. While living in different countries and communities, many of my friendships that have persisted across time and place are with women. There is a warmth, intimacy and care in these relationships that inspires me to keep doing what I do, and my art naturally draws from this.
Abundance
You’ve recently started making your own art materials. What inspired you to start working with rocks, plants, and other natural materials?
In 2018, a friend of mine introduced me to making inks with foraged materials. I was fascinated by the process as I had never thought about combining my interest in crafting with foraged and found materials with painting. I then tried natural dyeing some of my clothes, which was also a magical process. On a seaside hike when I was living in the south of England, a friend and I wandered down some cliffs and ended up at a small beach that had lots of highly pigmented red, yellow, and dark brown rocks. I saw this as a sign from the universe that I needed to start making paints with earth pigments. I took a course with Tilke Elkins from The Wild Pigment Project in November, which has really inspired me to delve deeper into working with natural pigments. I don’t want my relationship with natural materials to be extractive so I only take small quantities, try to pick up any trash while I forage, and share skills with others, as a way to create greater reciprocity and cycles within my creative practice.
What was the first piece you made from these materials?
The first time was picking up charcoal pieces when we would go to the beach near Karachi and drawing on rocks! But in terms of incorporating natural materials in my artwork, I created a series of postcards two years ago with landscapes created with natural inks from kitchen waste. I incorporated pressed seaweed that I had found on my walks as “trees” as I really enjoy mixing up different kinds of natural materials.
You’ve traveled a lot over the past decade. Can you share a standout experience from your travels?
A story that stands out was from my trip to Lebanon last August to visit a dear friend. On the first night there we went camping in the mountains with some of her friends. We met someone there who lived locally and would create his own hiking routes. He ended up taking us on a hike through a route that he frequently took. All we knew was that we needed to leave our valuables behind as we would be going through water. Our entire hike ended up going upstream a river, climbing up and down rocks, going through cave-like areas, and swimming through parts that were too deep to wade through. He took us to all of these hidden waterfalls, large and small, that couldn’t be accessed through the actual trails. There were some where you could go behind the waterfalls and were cocooned by the fast-flowing water. In the hot humid heat of the day, it was incredible to spend hours hiking entirely through water. It was one of the most unexpected, magical experiences!
Tell me about Reth aur Reghistan, your multidisciplinary arts project exploring Pakistani folklore, sculpture, and poetry.
Reth aur Reghistan is a project started by myself and my sister and poet, Manahil. Growing up in Karachi, we both crafted using materials we had foraged from the beach such as interesting shells or rocks and materials that our grandmother or mother gave to us, such as pieces of sari fabric, broken jewelry, old wedding invitations etc. As adults, being able to use materials that have stories of place, history, and culture within them added greater depth and meaning to our artwork. We wanted to create art that was inspired by folklore and folk stories from where we grew up, but unfortunately we didn’t have access to these stories. We applied to a Canada Council for the Arts grant in 2019, which got approved and is really what set the project into action. Fast forward to 2023 and we are in the midst of publishing a book of sculptures, stories, and poems. We have an artist residency in June with Jumblies Theatre + Art, which will include workshops, community drop-ins, an exhibition, and a performance. We have a project website sculpturalstorytelling.com for anyone that’s interested in learning more!
What do you hope people will take away from your exhibition kinesis?
I hope that people can feel more connected. Either more connected to someone else through a meaningful conversation or exchange. Or more connected to themselves through thinking about something a little bit differently, with more gentleness and openness.
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Interview by Glodeane Brown
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