Two artists exploring aspects of their Islamic heritage and personal identities converge in a pair of enchanting shows at New Image Art Gallery. Originally from Karachi, Pakistan, Brooklyn-based artist Hiba Schahbaz applies her rigorous undergraduate training in traditional Indo-Persian miniature painting to works of a much larger scale in her show, “The Garden.” Lovely yet subversive, her roughly life-size nude self-portraits satirically challenge mainstream mores here and in her motherland. In contrast to the standard “male gaze” with regard to depictions of nude women, Schahbaz’ dreamily introspective paintings portray her body as she styles it, a self-reflective “female gaze” of the artist commanding her own image and situation amid history. Painting with black tea and gouache in meditative washes on handmade paper, she fancifully posits herself, with tan skin and flowing raven hair, as a beautiful re-imagined protagonist (pictured above) of canonized European paintings such as Ingres’ Grande Odalisque. In contrast to Schahbaz’ deceptively straightforward self-presentation, ceramic artist Sharif Farrag reflects upon his daily life and personal history through his own idiosyncratic mythology of stories and characters no less intriguing for the fact that their individual significations are not easily unraveled. A native Californian raised in Reseda by his Egyptian father and Syrian mother, Farrag harmonizes his divergent origins by incorporating aesthetics of comics, skateboarding, graffiti and car culture with styles associated with Muslim cultures. His show, “Hart Street,” appears as a bizarre bazaar of ceramic sculptures occupying floor, pedestals, shelves and rugs. To examine the elaborate detail in Farrag’s whimsically creepy vessels and sculptures is to descend a rabbit hole of peculiarity.

New Image Art Gallery
7920 Santa Monica Blvd.
West Hollywood, CA 90046
Shows run through Oct. 27