Works of four artists displayed

LAHORE: Ejaz Art Gallery is showcasing a group show of four amazing artists’ recent creations titled Redefining Identities on Friday (today) at 6pm at MM Alam Road.

Curator Muhammad Sulaman of this grand happening on Provincial Metropolis’s Artistic horizon explained: “Identity is always an important aspect to define who we are and what we want to be. Whenever someone loses his identity he becomes more like a consumer than a citizen. We are living in an advanced age where social media is shaping us more than our parenting. It is continuously giving us a direction to go and choose what we want to be. I think artist’s responsibility is to say what he or she wants to say. It sometimes encourages people to have their own point of view and redefine their desires. I am looking at artists in this exhibition as they are trying to connect their identity and questioning what is happening due to consumer culture in Pakistan. As Noor ul Huda is talking about our social and political lives through domestic scenes. How this modern age affected our personal life and behaviours.

It looks very usual in a first look but observing it lets its viewers know about societal and cultural influences with hidden detail in it. Hajira Ahmad is trying to connect with her own self by taking inspirations from religious and the Muslim believes. She is experiencing “tarikat” and “akeedat” by visiting such locations and using its imagery in her work. It allows her to make a connection with its own image in herself and let her viewers look it in a way that they can also experience the same essence in a gallery space. Nizam Baloch is interested in traces that shows our identity, whether they are tangible or intangible. He also talks about impression of a person on other person’s mind. And he is commenting on it by discussing how people were represented in history.

This is why he makes his images in a very pix-elated way like they changed their identity with the time. Kiran Waseem, another amazing artist, is talking about memory and imagination, memory that builds an identity of things, which we experience, and imagination, which manipulate them.

She is doing it by painting hazy nightscapes and areas which are familiar to her. I see it like she is figuring out a line between what is real, the things, which we see, or its impact on us, which usually got manipulated with our imagination. In this exhibition all artists are taking about these things in their own way of looking at these things.”

Hajira Ahmad, a brilliant artist, while commenting about her work said: “My work took inspiration from religion and the Muslim belief system. Sharia is stationary whereas the practice "tarikat" is more like a gateway, incorporating in itself the rituals carried out with a mere sense of "akeedat". Like the mosque being a symbol of Sharia whereas a shrine on the other hand signifies "tareekat".

In my work with the use of brilliant colours I started painting the spaces which stand evidence to such practices. I wanted to capture the essence of this notion which was romanticised to a point that it became unreal and metaphorical (hence the use of brilliant colors).”

Another young and vibrant artist, Noor ul Huda, says her work depicts the sensitive socio-political dialogue through domestic scenes. Currently the subject matter of her work has expanded to include the public realm. The impact of social and cultural circumstances extended beyond the domestic and that is what her work is grappling with now, she said. Noor creates work on sheet using a variety of materials.

Nizam Baloch, another artist of this mega show, maintained: “All of us leave our traces – visible or imperceptible on objects we use. Sometimes in the memory of people we know, often on the slat of history. Usually these memories are mingled, mixed, merged, and manipulated – occasionally erased and razed, he said.

In the works on paper Nizam ud Din, images of bygone periods, missing persons, distant eras and diffused parts are resurrected to comment upon the presentation and representation of history. Group photos of important figures now lost in the pages of past still exist in the mind of many, but each recollection is a unique appearance, like the works, in which features, forms and figures are modulated, modified and melted with the passage of time.

Artist Kiran Waseem said: “My work is based on the idea of travelling where memory and imagination meet and separate. My process includes multiple layers to create a certain motion by putting layers of paint on a canvas which fades away its own quality. Travelling is similar to memories layering over one another, fusing with imagined events and then the haze to bring to mind something specific. I am fascinated by the way one is unable to tell where memory ends and imagination starts. When I travel, my memories travel with me and my work holds that same hazy quality, both in its process and its outcome. I paint those hazy night and areas which are familiar to me.

The sense of attachment and detachment at the same time has always been poetic for me to paint.”