Maria Qamar

Maria Qamar (born c. 1990[1])is an artist and author of the book Trust No Aunty.[2]

Qamar was born in Karachi, Pakistan to a father from Bangladesh and a mother from Gujarat, India.[3] Both parents are chemists.[4] She was exposed to both Bengali culture and Gujarati culture growing up.[3]

In 2000, when she was nine, the family emigrated to Ontario, briefly residing in Scarborough.[4] The family then moved to Mississauga, where she spent the rest of her childhood.[5] She experienced prejudice and bullying against South Asian children in her school,[3] especially in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.[1] So as she later recalled, "I started going home and drawing comics about these experiences. But I would change the outcome. In my comics I always got the last laugh."[3] She aligned both with her Desi identity and with Western teen goth, punk rock, and heavy metal subcultures.[4][5]

She moved to Toronto and took a copywriting job in the advertising industry.[4] This she did not like, and she was laid off around 2015.[4][1] She then gained popularity as an artist through her Instagram page where she goes by the name of Hatecopy (the name indicating her feelings for her former field).[6] As of 2019 she had a following of over 170,000 people on her Instagram platform.[1]

I realized that if you take a still from an Indian soap opera when it's zoomed in on somebody's face and you take a Roy Lichtenstein piece and you put them side by side, it's the exact same expression — but it's coming from two opposite ends of the planet. I decided to merge the two because it kind of described who I was as a person — I'm not one or the other. I don't have to choose.

Maria Qamar, [1]

She is known for her satirical lens commenting on the hybridization of South Asian and Canadian culture. She uses a pop art aesthetic to create works that tackle themes surrounding her experiences of racism, the first generation experience, body shaming, classism, and the patriarchy.[7][8] Her style is explicitly influenced by the work of Roy Lichtenstein and also by low culture such as Indian soap operas; one of her first works was captioned "what if Lichtenstein parodied Indian soap operas."[1] She does not translate her works for Western audiences, instead leaving South Asian terms and themes in unaltered as she focuses on a Desi audience.[1][4]

Qamar has sold work at exhibitions in Toronto, Los Angeles, New York and London. The Mindy Project creator and actor Mindy Kaling collects Qamar's work and her paintings decorated the set of that show.[8][9] She had also created murals, signs, and menu and plate designs for restaurants in various North American cities.[3]

A 2019 exhibition, entitled "Fraaaandship!", at the Richard Taittinger Gallery in New York brought her additional visibility as the youngest artist at the gallery and the first to come from an Instagram background.[1]

Trust No Aunty won the 2018 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for humour.[10]

References
  1. Gupta, Alisha Haridasani (August 16, 2019). "Pop Art in South Asian Millennial Strokes". The New York Times. p. C14.
  2. "Why Maria Qamar turned her art into a guide for girls growing up in South Asian families | CBC Books". CBC. Retrieved 2018-05-23.
  3. Krishna, Priya (August 2019). "Comic Relief". Bon Appétit. p. 42.
  4. Onstad, Katrina (April 9, 2018). "The Provocateur". Toronto Life.
  5. Lehoczy, Etelka (August 2, 2017). "Maria Qamar Dishes Up Desi Pop in 'Trust No Aunty'". npr books.
  6. Lalani, Azzura (August 1, 2017). "They gave her bad advice. Toronto artist Maria Qamar turned it into a book: 'Trust No Aunty'". thestar.com.
  7. Grundy, Mercedes (March 15, 2016). "Pakistani-Canadian artist Maria Qamar's unique brand of pop art rules Instagram". CBC.
  8. Bascaramurty, Dakshana (August 2, 2017). "Canadian artist Maria Qamar calls out the women who raised her in new book Trust No Aunty". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved March 11, 2018.
  9. "Artist Maria Qamar Blends South Asian Sensibilities With Pop Art". Pacific Standard. Retrieved 2018-05-23.
  10. Samraweet Yohannes (2018-06-19). "Omar El Akkad, author of American War, among winners of $10K Kobo Emerging Writer Prizes". CBC News. Retrieved 2019-06-11.
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