Shanzay Sabzwari's paintings take you to the world of money, power and fairy tales. She merged the two themes in a skilful style in her recent paintings exhibited in a solo show at Sanat Gallery, Karachi. Titled 'Tale as Old as Time' the current body of work left questions to be answered by the viewers according to their perspective on various issues. She played with the conscience of people by allowing them to relive their childhood days in fairy tales painted in her paintings.
Just like fairy tales money and power stories are as old as time. Therefore by combining both Shanzay combined a serious issue with a light theme of fairy tales that helped viewers in understanding the real problems more clearly as their minds relaxed by fairy tales they could think about the issues with more concentration. It was the same game played by mothers to help easily memorises a difficult topic by their children, kids' memorises the rhymes or uninterested topics more quickly and readily this way.
Shanzay has followed that rule and took test of viewers in following her tales. Currency notes, Mughal era royal personalities and fairy tale characters recur in her paintings to create the stories.
"My current body of work stems from currency notes: pieces of paper used so very often that they are typically overlooked, yet held dear for their purchasing power, and are representations of money as a symbol of supremacy and control. The diverse coloured roses in my pieces are representations of passionate love, beauty and happiness, and, paradoxically, fragility and false promises. This makes us question: are we viewing this world through 'rose-coloured glasses'?" she stated.
Done in mixed media including coloured pencils, pens, inks, gouache and graphite her paintings have miniature look. Her paintings have intricate compositions with complex characters and many details, parts and elements.
She used digital prints of currency notes. In reality these notes of different countries as well as ours carry various political figures such as founding fathers of the nations and kings and queens of the past and present. But in Shanzay's paintings these notes depicted cartoon characters beside other political and revolutionary people's portraits.
She juxtaposed money and world political leaders especially in order to suggest a link between them and to emphasise the contrast between them. At a glance the two elements are markedly different from each other but in reality they both are close allies.
"I have always been interested in the aspect of deception, and the various nuances it presents itself in, whether in large-scale worldly matters or on an individual level. I find the term, 'what you see is not what you get' to be very apt. Unknown parties, whether political or economy-based, make major world-decisions, and what is fed to us by the media is most often tailored and tweaked to satisfy personal motives," she elaborated.
Different motifs and characters from various fairy tales such as "Alice in Wonderland", "Aladdin" and "The Little Mermaid" were used by the artist to make her point through the paintings.
"In my works, the overlapped or dual images of political figures extracted from notes are tools that denote the multiplicity and layers attached to situations, where reality or the 'truth' lies hidden. As of late, the incorporation of Disney symbols in my currency-based works (as metaphors for certain ideas) is an extension of my concerns, and provides a supplementary viewpoint to the aspect of manipulation of thoughts and mind-sets," she explained.
She linked media with promulgating consumerism and consumption, involving the use of currency on a massive scale. In her opinion, "Currency notes symbolize not only the purchasing power of money, but also symbolize political leaders and their power in general."
It seemed she wanted people to realise and understand the numerous ways in which material choices are manipulated by the media, and also how political leaders around the globe made major decisions based on this. Thus she wanted viewers to exercise their conscience and have better perspective of things around them.
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