Amna Walayat: 'You hear about fallen women, you never hear about a fallen man'

The Cork-based artist sees links between the way women have been treated in Ireland and in her native Pakistan

Wed, 18 Oct, 2023 - 13:30

Marc O’Sullivan Vallig

Over the past few years, Amna Walayat has quietly emerged as one of the busiest people on the arts scene in Cork. As founder of the Pakistan Ireland Arts Exchange, she is working with the Embassy of Pakistan to promote South Asian art in Ireland, and as creative producer in residence with Cork County Council, she has organised the Basant/Kite Flying Festival in Carrigaline, to welcome the arrival of spring.

Walayat’s own work is also garnering much attention. She is currently showing – along with Mary Moynihan and Hina Khan – in the Eternal Rebels exhibition at the Pumphouse in Dublin Port as part of the Dublin Arts & Human Rights Festival 2023. Earlier this year, the EVA International Biennial in Limerick commissioned a new body of paintings, and Sirius Arts Centre in Cobh will host a solo exhibition of her work in November.

Walayat’s paintings tackle social issues such as the Mother and Baby Homes in Ireland, and the abuse of women in her native Pakistan. “All of my work has an underlying context or layer of feminism,” she says. “It's all about the female struggle. In Pakistan, it is only the women who are blamed for having a child out of wedlock. They suffer violence in the name of shame, and many killings go unreported. It is in the same context as the Mother and Baby Homes in Ireland. You hear about the fallen women, you never hear about a fallen man.”

Walayat’s work is instantly recognisable, based as it is on skills associated with traditional miniature painting. “It’s a very time-consuming process,” she says. “You have to build up many very thin layers of paint, and each painting can take three months to complete. But it’s a magical effect; the painting will look like it was made by a printer, not by hand. I also work in what’s called the neo-Indo-Persian style of painting. I still make the paper and grind the colours by hand, but the style is not so ornate, so I can finish the paintings a little faster.”

The paintings are often focused on a single individual; Walayat herself, or a grim-looking Catholic nun, or – more surprisingly – Queen Victoria. “I know Victoria was involved in slavery and colonialisation,” she says, “and you could say she was controlled by men, but I was looking for a powerful female to use as a symbol for a long time. Victoria challenged the Turkish, Persian and Mughal empires, and all were conquered or surrendered. In the late 19th century, she ruled over almost the whole world.”

Walayat studied art in her native Pakistan, graduating from the University of the Punjab in Lahore with an MA in Fine Arts in 2002. She worked as a programme organiser with the Pakistan National Council of the Arts and as a curator with the Alhamra Arts Council in Lahore before moving to the UK. She lived there and in France for some years before settling with her family in Cork.

Walayat’s husband works at UCC, and she completed an MA in Modern and Contemporary Art History, Theory and Criticism at the college in 2016. “We have two children, and I never found time to make art when we lived in France or the UK,” she says. “It was only during the Covid lockdowns, when my husband was at home, that I had the chance to work on my paintings at the kitchen table.”

A detail from Expusion 1, by Amna Walayat.

For all the success she has accrued over the past few years, Walayat remains conscious of her status as a dual citizen, a situation she has made the subject of A Flight of Two Half Birds, her suite of paintings currently showing at EVA in Limerick. “The title comes from a proverb,” she says. “Having dual citizenship is like being half-and-half of two birds, a pheasant and a partridge. One is a domestic bird, the other is completely wild. There are two distinct identities. Integration can be very difficult for people with dual citizenship or a conflicting background.”

She is looking forward to her work at EVA going directly to Sirius, where it will be shown alongside her other paintings. As for the future, she is already planning a number of curatorial projects for the Pakistan Ireland Arts Exchange.

“And I have a big canvas in my studio which is waiting for me to turn into a wonderful painting,” she says. “I’ve already sketched out my ideas, but I need to start working on it seriously. It will take a lot of time, but I think if I complete this painting from my heart, it will be amazing.”