Ambreen Butt

(Born in 1969 in Lahore, Pakistan)

These works are not currently on view.
 

Untitled from the series Bed of My Own Making, 1999
Watercolor, gouache and thread on Mylar and paper
14 x 11 in. (35.6 x 27.9 cm)
Promised gift of Barbara Lee

A student of Persian and Mogul miniature painting, Ambreen Butt expands on the format of this ancient technique. With intimately scaled imagery on overlaid sheets of stitched Mylar and paper, she weaves open-ended narratives that are both formally and conceptually layered. This work is from the 1999 series Bed of My Own Making, which introduced Butt’s female protagonists looped in cycles of impending calamity. Untitled shows a lone, long-haired figure standing in profile with a lit torch, about to march forward, yet her own tresses moor her to a sprouting tree behind her.

Multiplicité (AB95) from the series Cirque du Monde, 2007
Watercolor, white gouache and thread on Mylar and handmade paper
15 x 12 in. (38.1 x 30.5 cm)
Promised gift of James and Audrey Foster

Multiplicité (AB95) comes from Butt’s recent series Cirque du Monde, also exploring metaphors of constraint, this time with figures that multiply and acrobatically stretch themselves in resilient arabesques. The protagonist is now a blue-shirted avatar of the artist herself, facing the demands of her contemporary experience. The work presents a fiveheaded dragon from the mouths of which emerge our heroine, arms active and face determined
and resolute.

Untitled from the series Bed of My Own Making, 1999
Watercolor, gouache and thread on Mylar and paper
14 x 11 in. (35.6 x 27.9 cm)
Gift of Nancy B. Tieken

Untitled depicts a woman with a potted tree on her head, juggling balls as she poses on the apex of a hill that descends into uncertain territory.  As in the other Untitled above, we see a woman in profile balancing conflicting forces—like a yin and yang, these two works bookend each other as metaphors for going and staying, leading and following.

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