A brain teasing exercise in sculpture

Karachi
To begin with, Nadir Ali Jamali’s sculptures may be all Latin to the casual visitor or the amateur art enthusiast. It may be nothing more than random pieces of wood carved absent-mindedly. However, a little contemplation, a little delving into the art forms gives one a greater insight into his works and he realises that they are not all that random after all. They have a profound message to convey.
Jamali’s medium is wood. Being one of an agriculturist family, what he has at the back of his mind is the agriculture and the fertile soil the country has been blessed with.
Through the wood medium, Jamali wants to convey the fertility of the soil of his motherland. The black or red lines on his brown wood sculptures are supposed to be connotative of canals and rivers which lend not only fertility but also beauty to the motherland. His works have a profound message to convey depicting his love for his motherland. One only has to have an overly fertile imagination to comprehend the depth of his work. Carving in wood, he says, is far more difficult than carving in metal.
“My works are suggestive of my temperament and my sentiments,” says Jamali.
This is not to say that Jamali is not sensitive to the miseries and privations of a society marked by gaping economic disparity. Two of his sculptures depict the privations of the people of Thar. It is a pretty skilful job done whereby he has carved a woman carrying an emaciated baby, something that is connotative of hunger.
Another of his sculptures depicts a bonded slave, a work that is pretty suggestive of the theme, depictive of the lot of the exploited masses in a society rendered painfully unequal by the twin curse of capitalism and feudalism, a tribute to the way he’s carved the piece.
Jamali says that he derived inspiration for all his works from his teacher and mentor Shahid Sajjad at the famed National College of Art (NCA), Lahore.
His works could be classified as a mix of surrealism and abstractism.
Currently, he is an assistant professor at the Institute of Art and Design, University of Sindh, Jamshoro. The exhibition, being held at the Artscene Gallery in Clifton, runs up until February 13.