God Grows on Trees (2008) consists of 99 individual portraits of children and a C-print. The portraits of the children were painted over a year and informed by my visits to Madrassahs (religious schools) in Pakistan. Viewing the current fascination with Madrassahs as being akin to the orientalist painters’ fascination in the 19th and early 20th centuries with the harem, I attempt to thwart these exoticised readings to portray the universality of childhood experience. In painting the portraits I attempt to reproduce the faces as faithfully as I could, marrying realism with the techniques of miniature. The digital print was added to the work later. This is a photograph of trees along a road in Lahore, that are nailed with metal plates which reproduce the 99 names or attributes of God in Islamic tradition, and in fact gave the work its title as well.
