Rabia Zuberi’s life and work seamlessly merged art, education, and quiet revolution, leaving behind a legacy too powerful to overlook.
Rabia Zuberi was one of those for whom life and art were not delinked. Her sculptures and two-dimensional works reflect the personality of the artist. Strong, yet subtle and forthcoming. I met her on a few occasions, and each time, the much older and one of the senior artists of the country (born in 1939), impressed everyone by being compassionate, friendly and humble. Before she passed away in 2022, she was an overarching shadow on one of her many creations: the Karachi School of Art, where she taught for many years, and welcomed everyone who crossed the threshold of that unique art school.
This quality of being generous to people, regardless of age, background, style in art, level of success, or years of struggle manifested way back in 1964 on her establishing Karachi School of Art (KSA) with her younger sister Hajra Mansur and Mansur Rahi: Pakistan’s first private art institute, still educating young minds who seek their future in different fields of arts.
Rabia Zuberi, while a student at the Lucknow School of Art visited the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi and was “awestruck at the sight of uniformed guards on duty outside the gallery where Amrita’s [Sher-Gil] paintings were displayed”. Or her move to Pakistan in 1963, a shift that in the artist’s words, brought “another existence and another perspective of feelings and experiences. Another phase started to respond to the circumstantial uncertainties and certainties”. A period eventually culminated in receiving one award after another for her works displayed at the National Exhibitions of Pakistan.
One could approach the art created by Rabia Zuberi in connection with her contribution through her teaching at the KSA. She dedicated her energy to making sculptures of men and women, simplified, stylized, personalized, but always full of feelings, and reflecting the emotions of others, the outsiders, the spectators.
The fact that Rabia Zuberi, a woman and, for that matter, not from a highly privileged class, was persuaded that sculpture was a remarkable endeavour. Putting aside the societal prejudices against the three-dimensional art, and opting for this medium, usually considered ‘manly’ – was a superb act of freedom and independence. Zuberi worked in steel, fiberglass, bronze, plaster and terracotta; materials which require labour, strength and expertise. She, till this day, is revered as one of the pioneers for dispensing with the expected linkage between gender and the techniques/mediums of art.
Although Rabia Zuberi exhibited several paintings and mixed media on paper, by and large, she was known for her sculptures in a country that witnessed an unkind reaction to this art form. The military dictatorship of Zia-ul Haq had a severe policy towards sculpture, and along with the state’s stance, the general public in Pakistan has been reluctant to appreciate and acquire sculpture pieces. Perhaps due to the notion of statues being idols. However, against all these odds, Rabia Zuberi continued producing sculptures in an overtly religious and highly patriarchal society. (She was the first signatory of the ‘Women Artists Manifesto’ signed by 15 female artists in Lahore in 1983). The state finally did recognize and paid homage to her artistic achievement, so if you visit the National Art Gallery in Islamabad, the first art installation you encounter is her Human Existence, a large composition of female figures fabricated in iron, and bronze.
Along with Zuberi’s conviction and commitment to her figurative and three-dimensional works, one feels that her great contribution to the art of this country is generally not acknowledged. Particularly her decision to establish an art school in a locality far from posh neighbourhoods. Initially in Nazimabad and later in Gulshan-Iqbal, Karachi.
In our circumstances, some individuals and groups have started private art institutions as lucrative investments, but Rabia Zuberi and the KSA were never known for the temptation/commercialization of art education. On the contrary, KSA admits and trains those who cannot afford the high fees of institutes in other places. One realizes it was a remarkable favour Rabia Zuberi initiated with her family members for those uncertain youths, men and women, who were unsure about their abilities, uncertain of their future, and unable to meet the expenditures of art courses. KSA guided them, a list that includes some of the prominent names of Pakistani art like Lubna Agha, Anjum Ayaz, Athar Jamal, Ghalib Baqar, Riffat Alvi, Roohi Ahmed and many more.
This aspect of bringing art to all sectors of life, a trait you still recognize at the Karachi School of Art, is the immense service an artist and art educator, like Rabia Zuberi, could do to Pakistan and its culture.