Afza Tamkanat is a Hyderabad-based artist.We can see her observations on life, in her art works. Inka cheppalante thana paintings lo conversations kuda kanpistay. I mean to say is they are so realistic when you take a keen look. She is the Hyderabad fourth artist to have a show at the Dubai art fair. On display there were eight paintings from her 2018 series.
“When you title a painting, it narrows down perspectives. I listen in to discussions people have when they look at my paintings. Some observations take me by surprise as they imagine the stories that would have happened in the context of the painting,” she tells us.
Her Themes
Afza’s art is influenced by her surroundings.Aa works lo oka vintage look baga kanpisthundi. We can see her love for vintage cars & sparrows in her work. alage Sydney& Hyderabad ni represent chesthunnattu ga konni looks kuda kanpisthay.
The cars too, like my other works, have a relation with my childhood reminiscences. With the symbolic presence of the car, I recall the string of sweet memories attached to it. Even the little sparrows that frequently appear in my paintings are like a doorway to my treasured moments says Afza.
Personal Life
Born in Hyderabad, earned a BFA in Painting from the city’s Jawaharlal Nehru Technical University and a postgraduate in fine arts from Hyderabad Central University. Her father is eminent painter Fawad Tamkanat is the inspiration for her to starts working on painting and for this amazing feature of including expressions into art.Afza basic ga hyderabadi but pellayaka Sydney ki shift ayyaru.
Love for Hyderabad
Afza has so much of love towards Hyderabad. She includes it in her art in every possible way. More in her words, Last year, her artwork depicting an old man drinking chai, caught the fancy of aficionados in Dubai. “one man from Oman who looked at the art and said, ‘This is so much like our culture in Oman — the man, the way he is sitting and his attire, everything’. So I told him, this is something he will get to see every day in Hyderabad.
“ Also one German lady stood admiring an ink-on-paper cityscape I had drawn. She then came up to me, and asked where did I manage to find such architecture. I told her about our Old City and she got really excited about visiting Hyderabad. And as it turned out, the very next month she was here!”
Mediums she use
She works on my canvases with a lot of coffee and watercolor and some mix media on acid-free paper. We can understand from her works that, she takes a deep look at common objects, and surroundings.
Afza says, Chai is more than just a theme for Afza as she also loves working on mediums derived from tea. Though she loves tea washes as a medium, of late, coffee has caught the artist’s frenzy. Pointing out the effectiveness of painting on such mediums, the painter says, “It has been interesting to say the least.
Every coffee brand and variety gives me a range of colours from dark amber to a subtle gold. I am even taking art works with colours rendered from Araku coffee to World Art Dubai. So yeah, I’m taking more than just art, as the medium too is very Hyderabadi,” says the artist, who will be showcasing her work next in Singapore in August.
Shows so far
She has participated in Group Shows like Contemporaries of Hyderabad, Indian and Danish painters show, Denmark.
You can find her Collections
India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Mongolia: Flowering cultures
She has also exhibited at Imago Mundi at Biennale 2013, Imago Mundi: The Art of Humanity – Treviso UNDER ONE SKY #KhabarLive
