Members of the public from Britain and around the world are invited to contribute online at www.shemza.digital.
Stuart Faromarz Batchelor is a London-based painter and computer artist who combines traditional media with custom software to create still, moving and installation work to explore visual phenomena and the relationship between maths, nature and our perception of meaning.
Aphra Shemza is a London-based multimedia artist exploring the impact and legacy of technology on our world.
Inspired by One to Nine and One to Seven, a painting by Shemza’s late grandfather (world-renowned British Pakistani artist Anwar Jalal Shemza), shemza.digital takes the quote there inscribed in Urdu as a starting point to continue his exploration:
“One circle, one square, one problem, one life is not enough to solve it.” Anwar Jalal Shemza, 1962
Anwar Jalal Shemza’s unique style developed through a painting practice that fused Western ideas of abstraction with Eastern influences – and shemza.digital has been established as a way to continue his formal and metaphysical exploration into abstract visual language, using new technologies.
The project is a celebration of our rich and diverse British cultural heritage, highlighting the impact and legacy of Shemza’s work on future generations.
By creating this interactive artwork, Shemza and Batchelor ask the public to join them on this journey, generating art that is free and accessible to all, both in its making and its perception.
Using the bespoke software hosted online, the viewer begins by clicking on the canvas to begin drawing with custom digital paints based on the elements from Anwar Shemza’s work.
The viewer can alter the colours of their design and choose between the paints to create their own unique drawing. Designs are then uploaded and stored in an online archive to be cumulatively transformed into a generative light art installation in 2021.
Much of Anwar Jalal Shemza’s practice was founded on the basics of geometry. This influence can be linked to his early exposure to traditional Indian carpet designs from his family business, but also more directly to Islamic design and Mughal architecture.
Many of his works explore the relationship between basic geometrical shapes, such as the circle and the square, evident in the quote above. The combination and amalgamation of these two shapes provided infinitely flexible configurations that also brought him close to Arabic and Persian calligraphy. This infinite prospect of two simple shapes is one of the key foundations of this new artwork, shemza.digital.
Now, his granddaughter Aphra and Stuart Batchelor incorporate new technologies unknown by Anwar to invite innumerable others to participate in building towards that limitless possibility of form and geometry.
Anwar Shemza’s sketchbooks clearly demonstrate his primary interest with linear, rhythmically orchestrated and serially developed two-dimensional space, brought out in the very act of drawing – here, through a new, technological way of drawing, the work of the public through their participation will culminate in something living online, and ultimately in the three-dimensional world as a generative light installation.
His grand daughter, Aphra Shemza works with abstraction, interactivity and light, Shemza combines traditional sculpting techniques with the latest technology to create her work.
Shemza’s work is multidisciplinary, making reference to Modernism with renewed optimism. In the last 8 years, alongside her own artistic practice, she has been managing the Estate of Anwar Jalal Shemza and become an expert in the field of his work. Currently cataloguing the archive of his work, his influence continues to be intrinsic. Her work explores Modernism, her Islamic cultural heritage, sustainable practice and creating art for all.
As an artist and activist, she finds ambitious ways to fuse methodologies from the past with new innovations in technology to imagine what the role of art could be in the future.
For this project she is collaborating with Stuart Faromarz Batchelor, to explore visual phenomena and the relationship between maths, nature and our perception of meaning.
Artists, to contribute online to this project go to www.shemza.digital.
