SabinaZebaHaque Artist Sabina Zeba Haque’s Nishana series, made up of mixed-media paintings, started with a simple idea. “We need to question the world that the media creates for us. We need to create our own maps,” says Haque. Haque was born in the United States, but was raised in Karachi, Pakistan, by her American mother and Pakistani father. Haque turned to art to express her experiences of living between two cultures. Her work often combines photography, collage, and painting, but her Nishana series blends scenes from video games and Google Maps. She was driven to create this series by the images of Pakistan that she saw in video games, where her beloved country is a place of violence and conflict. Haque wanted to create a virtual space that could challenge the negative images. Armed with her oil paints, Haque changes the Karachi maps in Modern Warfare 2 into the beautiful city that she grew up in. Copyright 2013 Sabina Haque. Sabina Zeba Haque created her Nishana series to personalize and ground these “dangerous places” from video games in emotion and history. Making ConneCTions The war depicted in Modern Warfare 2 is not actually happening. Consider how players would respond if they played a game that portrayed their community in a negative way. The bleak landscapes of Modern Warfare 2 are transformed in this painting, Crater. 50 Nelson English Unit 1: Conflict NEL