Toronto-based wunderkind Hani Pathan is a Jack of all trades. Known formally as her artist name— Huney Studios, the multi-talent expands an oeuvre across a myriad of mediums, exploring different genres and media, ultimately representing a steadfast belief that art is not simply a “one all, be all” approach. Since launching her creative career in 2018, Pathan has paved her own way, seldom looking back.
The journey of an artist is a precarious and difficult one to be sure. One can take on different voices, different mediums, different means of expression before ultimately finding their creative niche or voice. “What’s your dream?” Pathan asks in her Instagram bio. An affirmative question that invites the viewer into her creative process, and as an aspirational creative, Pathan is all about dreams, creating webs of versatility; never declining the opportunity to explore and stretch her craft.
Look closer into Pathan’s work and you’ll see that her visuality largely centers around motifs of home, body, and touch, pushing vulnerability through the usage of imagery that begs subjective interpretation. For the artist, it’s an outlet of emotion; an expression through which she finds comfort in a certain visual monologue. Ultimately a catharsis of humanity, love, and light.
From campaigns with Havana Club to modelling for UGG Canada, Pathan’s name is going global. Her latest endeavour involves painting elaborate designs onto Telfar bags. Elsewhere, her work on canvas has served as a medium through which to enjoy the creative process.
“Heart On My Sleeve” is reminiscent of Pathan’s process as an artist as it represents the fluidity of her journey as a creative. “I remember experimenting with different shapes, layering, and just having fun with the process. It was based on the doodles from my journal that I brought to life on canvas. There wasn’t a strict plan or sketch for it and that’s why I love it the most, it represents my life the best.” Society has become accustomed to five-year plans and ten-year daydreams that wither away at the possibilities of spontaneity. Pathan is the epitome of multifaceted talent that eschews these expectations at every turn.
“My art is playful and open to all interpretations. It’s important to me that there’s no singular meaning behind what I make,” Pathan remarks. In a time when the spectator demands political ideology or commentary injected into every artistic facet, Pathan doesn’t let her work become defined by extraneous influence.
Throughout much of the artist’s work, there’s a concurring theme of houses and the theme of walls. Abstract and often broken apart into their individual components, these motifs in many ways come to represent the obstacles that Pathan is trying to rework herself.
In all actuality, Huney discusses the four walls rhetoric, journaling it to her experience spent in suburban life and silence. “It’s about being born and raised in a suburban home. The quiet lifestyle and environment contrast with the life I want in the city. So much of my life has been spent at home and I aim to spend the rest of it outside those four walls.”
Huney epitomizes the bubbling Toronto art scene filled with artists taking chances and deepening their relationships with their craft. Tastemakers, thinkers, and movers like Huney, come to represent the beating heart of a city on the precipice of finding its own voice.
The jack of all trades ends with “the master of none,” — a term to express someone delving into multiple crafts without being particularly dominant at any of them. Huney certainly isn’t worried. Much like her peers in the city, exploration and joy are at the center of her process, as well as the joy of finding one’s voice. An artist’s perspective and vision are made in the throws of young ecstatic discovery, seldom in the sole pursuit of capital. Pathan is well aware of this, and her bespoke painted Telfars point to a perspective with a bright horizon.
JoliAmour DuBose-Morris is a multimedia journalist and screenwriter based in New York and California.
JoliAmour is currently in her final year of her B.A. at The University of San Francisco where she’s focusing on film and journalism.