Art show depicts Pakistan’s contemporary realities

GURGAON - An exhibition of innovative art from Pakistan speaks of contemporary issues in the country like equality of gender, freedom, filial ties, human suffering and politics.

The exhibition by 45 young artists is curated by leading Lahore-based contemporary artist Rashid Rana from the Lekha and Anupam Poddar collection at the Devi Art Foundation in Gurgaon.

The artists are mostly young graduates from the three most important schools of art in the country - Beaconhouse National University, National College of Art and the Indus Valley School. They include Abdullah M.I. Syed, Adeela Suleman, Ahsan Jamal, Aisha Khalid, Ali Raza, Amber Hammad, Anwar Saeed, Asma Mundrawala, Attiya Shaukat, Ayaz Jokhio, Ayesha Zulfiqar, Bani Abidi, Ehasan ul Haq, Fahd Burki, Farida Batool, Ferwa Ibrahim, Hamra Abbas, Huma Mulji and several others whose works reflect the “ongoing dialogues that the artistic fraternity in the country is having with the rest of the world in inspirations, styles, practices and content”.

“It took me three months to conceive the show with a focus. Anupam (Poddar) had asked me to curate the show one-and-a-half years ago. I did not exactly curate the show, I just put it together. I selected 75 works from the collection and gave them a concept,” Rana told IANS.

The exhibition tries to “assemble and reassemble old styles, memories, material and ethos” to create relevant images that reflect modern Pakistan.

An installation, “Parallel Conflict” by Adeela Suleman in steel drain covers, steel silencers, steel bathroom pipes and powder paints, portrays “the dualities inherent in the country in freedom, speech and religion”.

While the bathroom pipes spreading out like tentacles from the elongated steel silencers and drain covers symbolise the diverse issues the country is addressing at the moment, the covers from which they emanate like nozzles hint at a restraint on words.

“We have been through very bad times especially during 11 years of Zia’s (former president Mohammad Zia-ul Haq’s) regime. It has bred self-censorship. We try to censor ourselves,” Rana said.

Even grief is muted. In a delicate and unusual sculpture, Then Both of Us Were Born Anew - video projections on egg shells placed in silver tumblers - a woman draped in the traditional white of mourning breaks into tears and wraps herself in silence. The translucent light from the background illuminates the shells - refracting the image of the woman.

This hopelessness echoes in another art work - a four-panel video installation of paper boats in digital waters. The boats are inscribed with messages : “I am writing this letter again when I realise that the words I am writing mean nothing to me”.

A series of 11 small portraits of Pakistan founder Muhammed Ali Jinnah in myriad moods stand out for their meticulous grid work while artist Bani Abidi’s drawings of 12 types of security barriers found in Karachi narrate the common man’s “despair” with the stringent security and inaccessibility in the years of terrorism.

The exhibition will close May 10.