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he idea of a promised land – whether on earth or in heaven – has captivated communities across continents and throughout history. Individuals, groups and societies have either sought to forge new settlements rooted in ethnicity, religion or sect, or migrated elsewhere in pursuit of better living conditions, employment and environment. Even when residing in their chosen place, many continue to yearn for another, more perfect destination.
Take, for example, the populations of two countries founded in the mid-Twentieth Century: Pakistan and Israel. The two nations appeared on the world map in 1947 and 1948, followed by large-scale migration of Muslim and Jewish populations. Jewish people claimed to have returned to their ‘promised land’ – in reality, the territory of Palestinians, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, which had exterminated six million Jews in Europe.
Meanwhile, a vast number of Muslims from South Asia moved to the newly established state of Pakistan. This exodus, one of the largest mass migrations in history, was accompanied by, or followed by, the loss of an estimated two million lives.
Often, the country ultimately attained did not match the original vision, leading to disappointment, or departures in search of another ideal place.
Imran Channa, an artist born in Shikarpur, Sindh, studied and taught in Lahore, and has lived in Amsterdam since 2016. In his recent solo exhibition - Tilism-i-Hoshruba (5-13 August) at Canvas Gallery, Karachi, - Channa explored the quest for, and conquest of, a promised land. Despite its title, drawn from a fantastical tale, the exhibition engages with its subject and a specific historic moment in a manner that feels distinctly contemporary, both in concept and execution.
A brilliant and skilful painter, Channa opted to use digital tools, including AI and 3D software, to produce this new body of work. Intriguingly, the title Tilism-i-Hoshruba refers to a classical Urdu text (1883-1893) compiled and printed by Syed Muhammad Husain Jah and Ahmed Husain Qamar.
Despite its title, drawn from a fantastical tale, the exhibition engages with this subject and a specific historic moment in a manner that feels distinctly contemporary.
As the artists and scholars behind the work explained, “The writers claimed that the tale had been passed down to them from storytellers going back centuries. It was part of the beloved oral epic The Adventures of Amir Hamza, which arrived in the Indian subcontinent via Persia and grew in popularity during the reign of the Mughal emperor Akbar.” It was later famously illustrated as Hamza Nama by his court painters.
The fusion of medieval fantasy with cutting-edge technology lies at the heart of Imran Channa’s recent work, along with its societal and political subtexts. In Tilism-i-Hoshruba, Channa presents two distinct types of work: paintings and three-dimensional pieces. Both appear convincingly real, yet are entirely fabricated.
“We live in a post-truth era,” the artist notes, “where the fabrication of information is accelerated by technological tools and what is real and what is artificial has become almost indistinguishable.”
In truth, the boundary between the physical and the phantasmagorical has long been blurred in artistic practices, from ancient storytelling to modern digital production. An excerpt from Tilism-i-Hoshruba (The Enchantment of the Senses) reveals the surprisingly logical, even technological, connection between the classic and today’s digital tools. In the first volume, published in 1883, Afrasiab, the King of the Realm of Magic, “creates his optical form, and emerges out of the mirror to sit on his throne.”
What was fantasy for Nineteenth-Century readers is now routine for users of Adobe or 3D modelling software. Once a 3D image is created on the luminous, mirror-like screen of a computer, it can be rendered into a physical, three-dimensional form. Through his technique, concept and imagery, Channa draws connections between human imagination, behavioural patterns, desires and limitations.
His Enchanted Land series, paintings grouped in numbered sets, presents uncanny scenes generated by artificial intelligence based on the artist’s prompts to “generate visions of heaven: idyllic, lush, uninhabited.” Remarkably, Channa took these AI-generated images and then, like reversing the making of an omelette to retrieve the egg, translated them back into traditional mediums: gouache on paper and oil on canvas.
These human-less, desolate landscapes, “accompanied by Morse code statements proclaiming a homeland shaped by religious, political and moral purity”, hover in a liminal space between reality and unreality; between truth and post-truth; between human and machine. The distinctions are steadily eroding. With their patina of naturalism, the scenes appear believable, liveable, even desirable.
Religion, revolutions, patriotism and political ideologies have long steered people toward idealised and seemingly attainable futures, promising eternal bliss, peace, prosperity and pleasure.
The year 1947 is remembered as the moment of independence for both India and Pakistan. It is equally marked by mob violence and mass displacement. Countless people were killed; women were raped; families were forced to flee their homes, carrying only the barest belongings in search of safety.
The American photographer and photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White documented these traumatic journeys. Her photographs, published in Life magazine in the 1950s, became “visual records of trauma and transition, objects of historical memory.”
Tangible Fiction, the second component of Channa’s solo show, draws directly on these historical photographs. From the images, he has isolated mundane objects belonging to displaced individuals: a box tied with rope, a spread of chickpeas, a tiny cloth sack, a rolled mat, a metal dish, a traditional leather shoe, a tea kettle, a metallic water container. Each item serves as a material archive of its owner and of a moment in history.
Of the many things humans use, some disappear during their lifetime. Only a few outlive them. Channa does not seek to retrace the history of a single object or person. Instead, through these artefacts, re-materialised in PVC, he documents the collective experience of a generation that endured unspeakable brutality: the loss of homes, loved ones, personal possessions, and, perhaps most painfully, faith in humanity.
Although Imran Channa’s new work appear as paintings and sculptures, it is neither, in the traditional sense. At its core, these are conversations and conversions between physical experience and constructed truth. They also serve as a commentary on how the gap between the two is rapidly narrowing.
By evoking a disorienting visual response, a blurring of the line between the man-made and the machine-generated, the work compels us to re-examine what is being consumed as faith, patriotism, fact and other such monuments of fleeting moments.
The writer is a visual artist, an art critic, a curator and a professor at the School of Visual Arts and Design, Beaconhouse National University, Lahore. He can be contacted at quddusmirzagmail.com.