Meher Afroz (Pakistani b. 1948), Untitled, crowns from the Pindaar series, mixed media on board, circa 2003, 40 x 40cm.

Provenance: bought by the vendor from the Pindaar show held at the Chawkandi Art Gallery in January 2005, in Karachi, Pakistan.

 Afroz Mehar was born in 1948 in Lucknow, India, and has studied at the Government College of Arts and Crafts where she graduated with honours in 1971, before moving to Karachi, Pakistan. Pindaar means 'arrogance' in the her native Urdu language. Contextualized in a post 9/11 world enveloped in unrelenting violence, this work is a reflection on a historical moment.

Afroz is widely regarded as a master of both media and persists in bringing them together through her interest in ageing her surfaces to connote the passage of time and the resultant accumulation of experience. Similarly, the work on offer is built in successive layers of marks, which serve as a camouflage to the plasticity of acrylics. The iconography is typical for Afroz - bearded men, stars, celestial bodies, light bulbs, floating buildings, are only part of the mystical symbols dominating her works. In an article by The Herald from February 2005, Afroz explained herself as pontificating the vices of ego and her own yearning for sufistic self-annihilation on the other.

Today, Afroz lives in Karachi where she is a senior faculty member at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, along with being a founder member of ASNA, a non-commercial organization dedicated to the Exhibition and documentation of Arts and Crafts Pakistan.