Artists to bring ‘Diversity Social Harmony’ for art lovers

Islamabad:A group art show ‘Diversity and Social Harmony’ by various artists featuring traditional and contemporary arts will be presented for art lovers here on November 8, at the Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA).

The exhibition includes an exquisite collection of artworks, including paintings and ceramics as an attraction of Pakistani art. The event is a collaboration between Nomad Gallery and PNCA. While the art exhibitions will be followed by seminars, Daastangoi, performance art, and art workshops. The exhibition will be ongoing till 16 November.

S. Najam Kazmi, Samina A. Akhtar, Zafar Ali, Khurram Abbas, Hassan Sheikh, Areej Nasir, Emaan, Tauqeer Hilbi, Alefiya, Rakshanda Atawar, Hassnain Awais, Nabahat Lotia, Jamil Hussain and Kuzhad are among the participating artists.

According to Nageen Hyat, Curator of the show and Director of Nomad Gallery, Pakistani art has a long tradition and history. It consists of a variety of art forms, including painting, sculpture, calligraphy, pottery, and textile arts such as woven silk. Geographically, it is a part of Indian subcontinent art, including what is now Pakistan. Ceramics and glazed pottery are among the oldest art forms in Pakistan, dating back to the Indus Valley Civilisation (2,500 BCE).

The most popular techniques used include engraving intricate designs into the undercoating of the pottery and then glazing it with coloured transparent glazes.

The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling, and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing, and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both highly dynamic and characteristically constant features of human life, have developed into innovative, stylized, and sometimes intricate forms.

This is often achieved through sustained and deliberate study, training, and/or theorizing within a particular tradition, across generations, and even between civilisations. The arts are a vehicle through which human beings cultivate distinct social, cultural, and individual identities while transmitting values, impressions, judgments, ideas, visions, spiritual meanings, patterns of life, and experiences across time and space.

Puppetry and storytelling (oral traditions) are examples of traditional performance art. Commenting on why is traditional art important? Nageen said, “Passed down through generations, traditional art provides a shared experience for the entire community.

With values, cultural practices, and belief systems embedded in these art forms, they often form a common language through which the different communities that fabricate the society can be engaged.”

There is one word that can be used to describe the culture in Pakistan, it is diverse and has always found itself rooted in traditions along with art. It can be seen through the various monuments and iconic architectural structures across the country that are testaments to its glorious history. Culture and creativity here manifest themselves in almost all economic, social and other activities, she added.