This is from a series of miniature portraits of food sellers in Little India, Singapore. Abbas’ portraits are the result of a research residency at NTU CCA in Singapore, where she learnt the courtly Chinese painting style of Gongbi, a ‘meticulous’ and realist painting technique usually executed on raw silk. Originally trained in miniature painting in the Mughal style, Abbas observed numerous similarities between the Chinese style and the South Asian, with one difference – the translucent surface of the silk requires painting on both sides to strengthen the image.

During her residency, Abbas made many visits to the neighbourhood of Little India, which began in the early 1800s, as a colony set up by Indians who came to Singapore as prisoners of the British Raj. Upon their release, many chose to settle there and established a colony called Little India. Many others who were brought from Indian villages as indentured labourers also chose to stay. Little India is still populated primarily with Tamil Singaporeans, a small minority who constitute 6.5% (160,000) of Singapore’s total population. It is a neighborhood with a very strong connection to food and sustenance. As well as its multitude of restaurants and street stalls catering mainly to South Asian tastes, it is a place where the Chinese community go to grind rice to make congee using the very machinery that was originally imported from India to grind spices used in Tamil cuisine.

Whilst in Little India Abbas struck up conversations with the chefs and the waiting staff, forming connections with them and also capturing their photographs. Upon her return to Lahore she used the Gongbi technique to paint portraits from her photographic documentation, drawing from her earlier series God Grows on Trees (awarded the Sharjah Biennial Prize in 2009) in which she painted portraits of school children taken from her photos of them in Pakistan’s madrasas (religious schools). Abbas’s portraits of these nameless workers are endearing, and humanises a minority who often are overlooked either because of their social status or race - a commentary on the history of the movement of labour, forced or otherwise, their long-term settlement and ultimate coexistence. Appropriating courtly Chinese techniques to tell the story of the movement of Indian labourers, Abbas reveals the intertwining of histories, class, race and culture.