AN ANALYSIS ON ANNA MOLKA AHMED’S PAINTINGS ‘HUNGER’ & ‘BEGGARS’: A SEMIOTIC APPROACH BY CHARLES SANDERS PEIRCE

Abstract

Anna Molka Ahmed (1917–1994) was a leading artist shaping modern art in Pakistan through her fusion of the Western methods with the native cultural understanding. Her paintings, Beggars (1964) and Hunger (1984), depict the critical socio-political realities like poverty and suppression. This research seeks to conduct a semiotic analysis of paintings through Charles Sanders Peirce's triadic model of semiotics, representamen, object, and interpretant, there is a better analysis of how the paintings of Ahmed are communicative acts that document and criticize the socio-political realities of Pakistan in the 1960s and 1980s. By qualitative approach, the images of paintings and background historical information were analyzed to understand the deeper symbolic meanings embedded in visual forms. The evidence suggests that the Ahmed's application of earthy color schemes, human poses and textured methods speaks strongly of the human resilience and suffering caused by political distress and instability. The study provides significant information to the body of literature about the harsh realities faced by the marginalized in society and placing Pakistani art in the international semiotic and socio-political discourses.