Madeeha Iqbal

Born in 1989 in Lahore (Pakistan)
Lives and works in Lahore (Pakistan)

Madeeha Iqbal is a multidisciplinary artist who works in a variety of mediums, spanning from installation to painting, sculpture to digital media. She completed her BFA, with Honours, from The Institute of Design and Visual Arts, Lahore College for Women University in 2012, then proceeded to complete her one-year Professional Diploma in Calligraphy and Illumination at the National College of Arts, Lahore. She obtained her MA Hons in Visual Arts from the National College of Arts in 2016. Her work has been widely exhibited locally, and she has been part of two international collaborative projects for the Emergent Art Space Online Gallery. Despite her training as a painter, Iqbal is constantly experimenting with her technical practice, exploring new means of creating a multi-layered visual discourse. She incorporates non-traditional materials in her work to endow it with a sense of spontaneity and creative dynamism, applying this to her interest in the continuous, natural dialogue in which we engage with our surroundings.

Iqbal demonstrates her innovative approach to medium in her untitled sculptural installation for the Karachi Biennale 2017. In her work, she synthesises two disparate interpretations of the commonplace: one, in the sense of feminine accoutrement; the other, in medical equipment. By inserting hypodermic needles into the very fabric of the handbag, bodyshaper and shoes, she amalgamates and transforms both sets of everyday objects, creating a strangely uncomfortable, anomalous whole. Iqbal’s novel use of ordinary objects also raises questions of the societal pressures that women are forced face on a day to day basis – it encourages the viewer to place themselves inside the work, evoking a subtle yet penetrative empathy.