Xandria Noir is a contemporary artist from Pakistan born in 1972 in Karachi. She holds a Bachelors degree in Social Sciences from Karachi University and a Certificate in 3D animation from Arena Graphics. She dropped out of C.I.A.C after finishing two years of four year program in Graphic Design, and Indus Valley School of Arts & Architecture from a diploma in Filmmaking respectively.
Her earlier work (1993 – 2005) practiced semi-minimalist representational forms inclusive of abstract figures, landscapes and calligraphy on wood, canvas, paper and pottery but when she resumed to attend her canvases after an eight-year long gap, her work presented large scale canvases emphasizing on bold black strokes in conjunction with bright colors.
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Soon her work evolved into minimalist art reflecting her true minimalist personality and her emotional suffering living in an Islamic country as a woman. Her work is mostly derived from geometrical balance. Her current practice consists of minimalist paintings, installations, ink and giclèe prints in new and mixed media.
Xandria works within several disciplines, varying from photography to abstract art, from film to mixed media. Each project is based on the in depth exploration of one idea, executed with meticulous precision. Her new work declares her lifelong obsession with square shape representing balance she has attained after decades of emotional struggle.
Light, squares, rectangles and lines of different dimensions freely inhabit weightless spaces in her work displayed to the delight of the observers. Each will aim to antagonize, upset, frustrate and/or agitate the viewer through different anti-social strategies. Whether articulated in painting, photograph, print or video, Xandria’s work attempts to create composite bodies that defy superficial boundaries. These works attempt to create composite forms that are seemingly alien, yet uncannily human; forms that repel and attract. The psychological boundaries of the body tied to temptation, sin, guilt, purification, and redemption.
Her practice constantly straddle the boundaries between analogue and digital, document versus art work, personal versus impersonal, video versus composed image and failure versus success in order to explore the dichotomies and contradictions at play.
