Islamabad : When we were invited to view a exhibition of scientific images, the thing that came to one’s mind was the pictures of sophisticated laboratories, all those glass test tubes, slides, dishes, microscopes, burners, chemicals boiling and bubbling, mice and other test-worthy animals scrambling in cages and lots and lots of men and women, draped in long white overalls, wearing face masks, headgears, gloves and goggles, settled on their workstations, pouring over their research work.
But once we entered ‘Gallery-2’ of the Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA), it was an entirely different perspective of scientific images that we were gazing at! And what we were looking at were the images which were aesthetically exhilarating. Science has unveiled the ‘deathly beauty’ of even the deadliest of the present-day pandemic, the ‘Coronavirus’! And a little explanation by a scientific mind who was fortunately present in the gallery, it became so easy to understand those images as to how this virus creeps up on its victim so quietly.
The exhibition is work of the German scientists engaged in research and development in the world famous ‘Max Planck Gesellschaft’ which have been brought and presented to Pakistani gallery goers by the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Islamabad in collaboration with the PNCA. The German Ambassador to Pakistan, Bernhard Schlagheck, formally inaugurated the exhibition and spoke briefly to explain the salient features of the exhibition.
Ambassador Schlagheck particularly emphasised the role played by Ms Asifa Akhtar, a Pakistani biologist who has made significant contributions to the field of chromosome regulation.
“While you look at this most fascinating images of science, you also must listen to what Asifa Akhtar has to say,” the German Ambassador told the audience, indicating the LCD screen on which Asifa Akhtar’s narrative was being played. She is ‘Senior Group Leader’ and ‘Director of the Department of Chromation Regulation at the Max Planck Institute of Immunmobiology and Epigenetics.