Maliha Azami Aga’s paintings, recently showcased during the exhibition ‘Alternate Reality’ at the Ejaz Art Gallery in Lahore, are characterised by vivid colours, dynamic brushstrokes and profound emotional depth.

They offer more than just visual splendour, inviting viewers to see the world through her unique perspective. Her palette — vivid fuchsia pinks, charged blues and pulsating yellows — interacts in a kaleidoscopic manner that splashes across the canvas, seizing the space and holding the viewer’s attention.

Aga’s Midnight Sun captures the rare phenomenon of luminosity at night, symbolising the inner self that burns like a midnight sun — defiant and illuminating. In contrast, the vast black sky haunts as a silent witness to the eerie stillness of night. A rare and rhythmic orchestration of hues — fuchsia, turquoise, orange, bold reds and emerald — seem to vibrate across the canvas. There is a feeling of urgent movement and restlessness in the strokes.

I see two distinct metaphors emerge from this painting. One is a celebration — the radiant illumination of the inner self, shining like a midnight sun through darkness. The other is far more haunting: the blood of innocents spilled across the foreground, its hues so potent they seem to have moved the very skies to grief.

The vivid colours of Maliha Azami Aga’s paintings belie a deeper undercurrent of turmoil

Winter of Discontent explores emotional, political and existential tension. The title, borrowed from Shakespeare’s Richard III, suggests a deep inner or collective unrest, a season not just of cold, but of upheaval, sorrow and hardship. The trees stand stripped bare, their stems painted in red, blue orange and yellow — devoid of leaves, they suggest desolation and endurance.

The Promised Land carries an immense symbolic weight. I find great spiritual relief in this work that seems to say that those who endure pain, hold fast to truth and walk the path of righteousness in this world are not forgotten. Their suffering is not in vain. For them, there is a promise — a realm beyond this one, full of ease, mercy and reward. The turquoise and white sky, and the snow-capped mountains at the back, evokes peace, purity and the surreal beauty of a dreamlike realm.

There is a profound tension between the fiery, blood-red sky and the vibrant, almost celebratory, rhythmic daubs in the foreground — all in stark contrast with the title Fallen Angels (My Children of Gaza). Rendered in acrylic on canvas, the work merges abstraction with emotional symbolism. The vivid, scattered dots of colour resemble floating souls, evoking the loss of innocent lives in Gaza. The sky mourns — a visceral cry against genocide — while the luminous dots in the foreground seem to illuminate a darkened world.

Jewel Series by Aga struck a familiar chord — its raw energy and layered colour fields reminded me of an exhibition title I once came across: ‘Colourful Chaos.’ According to the artist, the charged strokes reflect the complexities of her entangled thoughts and are what she “could grasp and what she could eliminate.”

‘Alternate Reality’ was on display at the Ejaz Art Gallery in Lahore from September 3-13, 2025

The writer is an art critic, fine artist and educationist based in Lahore.
She can be reached at  ayeshamajeed2015@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 26th, 2025

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Literally translated as ‘pick me up’ or ‘cheer me up’ from Italian, tiramisu done well is a delight. In fact, this transcendent, layered dessert of cake, coffee and cream is so popular that it is Italy’s most famous dessert export.

While some food historians speculate that tiramisu was created in Siena in the 17th century in honour of a visit by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo III de’Medici, others believe tiramisu may have evolved from the Italian dessert zuppa inglese, a cake layered with jam and custard, inspired by the English trifle. Tiramisu could have also branched out from another dish: since 1938, a Vetturino restaurant in Pieris in the Fruili-Venezia Giulia region has served a semi-frozen dessert called tiremesù.

Le Beccherie, a restaurant in Treviso in the Veneto region, claims that their chef Roberto Linguanotto and the restaurant owner’s wife, Alba di Pillo, invented tiramisu in 1969, with the dessert first appearing on its menu in 1972. However, a recipe published for the dish appears a decade earlier, in 1959 in Tolmezzo, Udine, in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region. That recipe is attributed to Norma Pielli, who owned a restaurant popular with hikers and one of whom reportedly dubbed the dessert ‘tiramisu’.

Where tiramisu originated is fiercely disputed, with the regions of Tuscany, Piedmont, Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Veneto all sparring for the honour. The Italian government, however, has officially declared tiramisu to originate in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, with the country’s agriculture ministry listing the dessert as part of the region’s agri-food products.

Tiramisu is a decadent combination of coffee, cream and cake

Tiramisu

This decadent dessert can be prepared a day or two ahead of time and stored in the fridge: just make sure to store the dessert in an airtight container or cover well with cling film. If you’d like to make the cake way ahead of time, then it is best to freeze it on the same day you bake it, in an airtight container. The cake will stay well for up to two weeks. Thaw in the fridge for a few hours before defrosting it at room temperature.

While the original recipe calls for mascarpone cream, it can easily be substituted by cream cheese. Feel free to use your own recipe for a sponge cake instead of the one given.

Ingredients

For the sponge cake
1 cup white flour
1¼ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ cup butter
½ cup whole milk
2 eggs
¾ cup sugar
¾ teaspoon vanilla essence

For the filling

1 egg
1½ cups whole cream/malai
1½ cups mascarpone or cream cheese
2 tablespoons fine sugar
1 cup espresso or strong coffee

Topping

¼ cup cocoa powder
2 tablespoons icing sugar

Method

1. Make the sponge cake. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius and grease an 8×8-inch baking tray (brush with melted butter and dust with flour).

2. In a large bowl, mix the dry ingredients — the flour, salt and baking powder. Set aside.

3. Add milk and butter to a sauce pan. Cook on medium heat, stirring occasionally until the butter has melted. Set aside.

4. In a small separate bowl, whisk the eggs. Pour the whisked eggs into a large bowl. Add a little sugar at a time and constantly mix with an electric beater or by hand, until stiff peaks form.

5. Add the vanilla essence and stir well. Add the butter-milk mixture, pouring a little in at a time. Then fold in the flour mixture. Mix well.

6. Pour the cake batter in the baking pan. Bake for 20 minutes or until done.

7. Make the filling while the cake is baking. Beat the eggs in a small bowl. In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, cream cheese, malai and sugar together until light and fluffy.

8. Brew a cup of strong coffee or espresso. For espresso, you will need to cook the coffee in a moka pot or espresso maker but strong coffee will do too. In a saucepan, pour one and a half cup of water and one tablespoon of ground coffee. Brew on medium heat until coffee is boiling.

9. Take the cake out when it is done and let it cool. Cut the cake length wise into three layers.

10. In a nice serving dish, place the first layer cut side up. Brush or spoon 1/3 cup of the coffee on the cake. Then, generously spoon out 2/5 of the cream filling mixture. Place another layer of the sponge cake on top and repeat.

11. Brush the top layer with coffee and cover with a thin layer of the cream filling. Dust with cocoa powder and icing sugar.

12. Chill in fridge for three to four hours or overnight for the layers to set. Cut into rectangular pieces. Serve with coffee or tea.

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 26th, 2025

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Muzzumil Ruheel’s solo show ‘The Wild in Our Mouths’, at Canvas Gallery in Karachi, was an exploration of the relationship between thought, text, image, sound and space. As has been the nature of Ruheel’s trajectory, the presence of stillness or the unsaid becomes equally audible as, if not more than, the visual in his work.

The current body of work evoked a feeling of liberation, where form wove a joyful dance, flirting with the spectator’s gaze. Cast in welded steel and anchored in the Thuluth script, these calligraphed forms defied convention. They were placed beneath eye level or above reach, thus playing with vision. The emptiness of the white walls insisted on viewing space in relationship to the object. There seemed to be no difference between these walls and the empty white spaces or flat colour areas of Ruheel’s earlier paintings on canvas, wood or paper.

The explored dualities, simplifying the idea, with disregard to boundaries of material or consumer demand. The visual as text, text as image and space as form was the proposition to explore here. The conventional viewing of art is still so predominant within the Pakistani art market and commercial gallery dynamics. Ruheel’s simple gesture can be viewed as a mark of dissent and resistance.

Even so, it is a subtext within the main narrative. One must also keep in mind that here one is literally ‘reading’ the art in the context of the artist’s journey and the places his form has travelled from. Ruheel’s work demands that commitment from the viewer.

Form, text and the gallery space itself were in dialogue with one another at an exhibition in Karachi

There has been a disruption in the age-old script and connotations attached to Thuluth as a form of embellishment of religious manuscripts and architecture. It is a cursive Arabic script that emerged in the seventh century and flourished during the Ottoman Empire. Ruheel’s inscriptions are like sculptural drawings, whose movement and orientation is solely determined by the artist.

He is situated well outside the orbit of a past time, nor does he seem to be replicating it, as has been the tradition. The spontaneity with which he chooses to play with line, exaggerating a curve or extending a line, defines his personal journey and where he chooses to place himself socially and politically.

The work alludes to larger questions on the nature of personal, social and political boundaries, expressed through the form. Only an expert calligrapher or a palaeographer can truly gauge the diversions in Ruheel’s use of script. We recognise some letters due to the familiarity of reading and writing in Urdu and Arabic. We are well attuned to the rigour of mashq or practice that strives for perfection and can see that Ruheel adheres to the discipline of his early training in calligraphy required for a compelling flow of line.

How far he deviates is dependent on the viewer to recognise, but one thing is for sure: the artist is having fun with form through language, which defies containment and expectation. He, therefore, charts a direction that creates unfamiliar pathways of seeing and ‘reading’.

Ruheel instantly places tradition off the pedestal, making it approachable and ordinary. He injects his story within recycled imagery off the internet, shattering the myth of the original in art. The title or captions carry a parallel commentary that completes the work. The form of a horse was calligraphed, carrying the text, “Where are your Reins?” and in brackets the translation in Urdu and direct translation in English: “Tumhari lagam kahan — Where is your leash?”

Another work, Can’t Argue with Genius, which he translated as “Ji Aap Sahi Keh Rahey Hain — Of course You Always Know Best.” This tongue-in-cheek sarcasm and commentary, inserted in the captions to the work, conveys the loss in meaning in translation from Urdu to English, and vice versa. It brings home the realisation of a colonised mindset, where we constantly need to translate and clarify, as if this was addressed to an English-speaking audience.

Ruheel comes from a place of familiarity with Urdu literature, as he fondly refers to the wide range of his inspirations, from Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi to Ibne Insha’s famous Urdu Ki Aakhri Kitab. This knowledge seeps into the nuances, punctuations and humour as he narrates, in his words, “this chapter.”

‘The Wild in Our Mouths’ was on display at the Canvas Gallery in
Karachi from September 16-25, 2025

The writer is an independent art critic, researcher and curator based in Karachi

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 26th, 2025

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