Love was just a glance away (diptych)

Mahnoor is more letters than body, more words than just this skin. Handwritten letters have always been something special to me as they spill nostalgic longing, loss, and love. As introverts, they are one of the best ways for artists to articulate their feelings. In the times of text messages, the idea of handwritten letters has always been more intimate to her, expressing the rarely spoken words and feelings and keeping them intact. It is an art in itself, the art of carefully putting the words to express love, to preserve a memory or to convey feelings which then don’t remain just words anymore rather it becomes an embodiment of a soul. Her artistic practice is based on my personal letters, the letters as her way of letting out the piled-up emotions inside her. She has preserved different emotions inside them, different moments that she has experienced in my life, the special ones which she wants to keep with me for a longer period so she can always read them again after years & experience it all over again. She has painted them in ways to try to keep the nostalgic essence alive. Old photographs and pressed roses have also been essential elements alongside, depicting a timeline, how time is passing by but the emotions are still alive in them. The purpose behind it is solely to show how meaningful it is that we put parts of ourselves in those pieces of paper, those parts which are not exposed to anyone, the secret parts, the hidden ones, and share them with others or keep them for our future self.