Neha Maqsood is a Lahore-based artist who uses painting, as well as other mediums, to explore questions of process, concealment and the undefined. She graduated from Beacon House National University, Lahore, Pakistan, in 2017, securing honors in her Visual Arts degree. She explores the queries of daily life using her painting process and digital work. Maqsood layers pictures to create one image that reacts to the process of an emotional state and goes back in time to explore how things move people. There is no hard-hitting theory or concept involved in her work; the daily life objects she explores show how she sees them and, then, generate an image for her audience to decide how they can connect themselves to that particular image.
To follow the heart is a good path for her–to become herself. An artistic vision, what she needs to express, often develops with time and working. One thing leads to another, and, eventually, she has more ideas than she has time to carry them out.
Her “Series 99” is the portrayal of time governed by the idea that what we know and what we see differ greatly. She uses “99” as a key word for an undefined and ongoing process. It comes from a religious characteristic–the 99 names of Allah—and suggests how HE is still undefined as is demonstrated by his numerous names in the Quran. Maqsood’s digital collage consists of 99 pictures overlaid onto each other. Recently, she worked with Atelier Muse, an artist residency in Istanbul, Turkey. Her work was also exhibited in TUYAP the 27th Istanbul art Fair in Turkey.
