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Melton Gallery
The Midnight Garden
On View: Jan 20–March 3, 2022
Opening Reception & Gallery Talk: Thursday, Jan. 20, 5-7:30 p.m.
Closing Reception: Thursday, March 3, 5-7:30 p.m.
Free and open to the public!
Gallery Hours:
- Mondays–Wednesdays, noon-5 p.m.
- Thursdays, noon-7:30 p.m.
- Fridays, by appointment
The Midnight Garden is a collection of works by Marium Rana, an American-born Pakistani artist. The exhibition is inspired by the artist’s relationship with the night and features paintings from A Place to Call Home as well as Siyah Qalam and Sleepwalk Daydream series, new works created to debut at the Melton Gallery.
These works depict remembered and invented landscapes and recreated moments from familial and personal memories. The Siyah Qalam Series is comprised of contemporary miniature paintings informed by traditional Mughal miniature painting techniques in Lahore, Pakistan. As much as the past inspired this collection of works, the artist also drew upon her recent experiences as a new mother. The Midnight Garden as a whole is inspired by the uncanny feeling of the familiar transforming to the otherworldly at night during spells of day-night reversal as Rana cared for her infant daughter.
About the artist
Marium Rana is an American-born Pakistani visual artist, who works primarily in ink and aqueous media. She is a graduate of Florida State University, where she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art in 2013 and a Masters in Art Education in 2014. For five years, Marium taught fine art and art history in Tampa, Florida. Marium currently resides in Oklahoma with her husband and baby, Safiya, where she paints from her home studio.
Marium has curated numerous art exhibitions, held solo exhibitions, and exhibited throughout the United States. When she is not painting in her studio, she has served as the design chair for TEDxFSU, painted various murals, has been commissioned by Aramco World Magazine, and presented her research at symposiums and various institutions.
In the summer of 2011, Marium received an undergraduate research grant to study traditional Mughal miniature painting in Lahore, Pakistan with Professor Naheed Fakhar of the National College of Arts. This traditional technique includes painting with a brush made from one hair of a squirrel’s tail. The Qalam Series arose from this experience. It consists of 8x11" paintings on paper. The series revisits the aesthetics of traditional ornamentation and modern-day street art in Pakistan.
A Place to Call Home is a series of paintings that delves into the complexity of belonging to two different cultures and trying to make a home out of stories of places and moments one has not personally experienced. The paintings depict landscapes that do not exist in our tangible world and seem as imaginary as the places that have existed before us.
Learn more about Marium Rana at the artist's website: mariumrana.com
Select programming is made possible in part by the Oklahoma Arts Council, which receives support from the State of Oklahoma and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Select programming is made possible in part by the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition.