Between Blinks and Brushstrokes: The Art of Farzana Ahmed Urmi

Farzana Ahmed Urmi's artwork resides within the border of memory and perception. She examines sight and reflection, considering how we see things and how choice is transitory. Each canvas she paints drives deeper the gap between conscious sight and the blink—a moment where clarity is dissolved into layers of abstraction and feeling overpowers rational thought.

Urmi has undergone deep personal reflection over the years, which greatly fuels her artistic pursuits. Throughout her life, she has dealt with a great deal of urban psychological stress, which led to some of her most impactful pieces. "To me, the city is theatre both of the known and unknown," she describes. Strangers become faces that settle within her subconscious, only to resurface as ghostly figures, constructing compositions scattered throughout the city. She summarizes a powerful concept by writing, "They are random people passing by, settled on my head. Some are blurred, some so strong. They talk sometimes when I wish to listen."

Urmi holds a post-graduate degree in printmaking and immediately demonstrates that her profile is far more versatile. She blurs the lines between distinct categories by incorporating all or any mixed media methods, including ink, watercolour, acrylic, oil and collage. Instead of getting confined by the methodologies, she moves freely and smoothly. That is a testament to her great conceptual explorations. Even the simplest actions, such as 'touching' the materials, become astonishing deeds in her hands. Her anger and the weakness of humanity in a detached way force the spectators to encounter the many hidden life realities in her images.

In crafting a unique visual language, Urmi does not shy away from discomfort. Her works bear psychological burdens on the body and the psyche. This tension creates an ominous pull in which viewers see themselves within the bodies that come and go in her frames.

Farzana Ahmed Urmi's art breaks the boundaries of traditional beauty and discomfort with an approach that is even art itself. It does not solve problems but initiates them — between the painter and her subjects, the painting and the spectator. Her self-contained pieces exist in juxtapose the perceived and the sensed, compelling us to remember that each blink stands still in time, filled with endless possibilities.