Islamabad
An exhibition titled ‘Amnesia’, a show by Sundeep Kumar and Syed Arsalan Naqvi opening at MyArtWorld Gallery today (Wednesday), comes as a contemporary twist in traditional paintings.
Browsing through the display, each piece of art speaks to the viewer in a diverse way, evoking an intense feeling of challenging times we face in our day-to-day life in today’s world.
The curator of the show and director of gallery MyArtWorld, Zara Sajid, told ‘The News’ that the feelings evoked by the works on display fulfilthe purpose of the show. Zara thinks that sometimes it is okay to bring the unpleasant to the surface, it is cathartic and it teaches us lessons we should not forget. However hard we may try to forget all the tumultuous times that our country has seen over last few years, forgetting is impossible, Zara said.
Through their most refreshingly innovative creativity of skill, style, and technique, both artists highlight different aspects of the trying times we've all witnessed either closely or from a distance. Instead of turning a blind eye to disaster, terrorism, calamity and poverty, the two man show bring forward these heart wrenching memories as an ode to the unsung heroes of Pakistan.
Sundeep and Arsalan explore their aesthetic philosophy and creative energy in an attempt to show the viewers that our heroes are not forgotten as they celebrate their bravery and valour and feel their pain through the artworks put on display at the show.
A graduate in Fine art from CEAD, Jamshoro, Sundeep uses coins to document the past through his round shaped canvases. His fascination with currency makes him deface the coins and swaps it with his memories. The young artist immaculately blends in realism with surrealism in oil on canvas.
Sundeep Kumar keeps the message simple and at the same time doesn’t allow the viewer to move away from his work easily. His artwork: the coin that the government of Pakistan has issued has a weepy image in the centre. But that’s not it. The magic lies in the date, the year 1997, that the currency appears to have been issued in. This is the year where something important happened. It’s up to the viewer to go back in time and figure out what. But not all displays were this fun.
Artist Sundeep Kumar, who hails from Tharparkar, used coins as they hold a lot of significance to his childhood. Kumar recalled that he was enrolled in a Tharparkar school in the year 1997 and, like every other child, he was given a Rs2 coin as a reward every day he spent in school. Another coin in his collection has a blood-soaked shoe of a young girl, which went viral on social media in the wake of the attack on Peshawar’s Army Public School. For Kumar, money is the root of all the violence in Pakistan. “It’s apparent that money is the only concern of the government,” he said.
Arsalan Naqvi is a Hyderabad based artist known for his portraits and depiction of rural life in interior Sindh. Arsalan has a diploma on fine arts from Khana-e-Farhang Iran Hyderabad. He sketches men and women in charcoals and mixes water colour in his paper drawings, often drawn on newspapers. Arsalan loves capturing the innocence, vulnerability and suffering of street children in Pakistan. Through his creative journey, he tried to immortalize the dark childhood of street children and expose the particular segment of the society that no one wants to talk about.
The exhibition ‘Amnesia’ would continue till January 22 at MyArtWorld, 5-A, Aga Khan Road, F-6/3, Islamabad. Gallery timings: 12 noon-6p.m., Mondays -- Saturdays.