The artist in his labyrinth

January 12, 2025

Adeel-uz Zafar and Khalil Chishtee explore evolution and identity through craft and concepts

The artist in his labyrinth


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f Adeel-uz Zafar is admired for his precision, Khalil Chishtee is celebrated for his embrace of imperfection. Zafar’s “career took a significant leap after his 2009 exhibition, Size Does Matter, at VM Art Gallery, Karachi.” Over the 15 years since, he has consistently created images of toys – primarily teddy bears – wrapped in cotton gauze by carving intricate lines on dark surfaces. Through this recurring imagery and uniform backgrounds, Zafar has developed a distinctive visual language.

While his palette is restrained, the work transcends a simple division between stark black and solid white. Instead, the intensity of his hand, the nature of the lines, their spacing and directional flow create a spectrum of tones. This technique harks back to the traditional method of engraving, while also aligning with modern monochromatic printing, where multiple shades are achieved by manipulating a single colour.

One can readily grasp the meaning and context of Adeel-uz Zafar’s visuals, particularly given his Karachi roots. Like millions of the city’s inhabitants, he has borne witness to years of terror, urban unrest and ethnic, sectarian and religious violence. This turbulent backdrop has left its mark in scenes of spilt blood, stained clothes, scattered limbs, injured civilians and dismembered corpses – especially the innocent victims caught in the crossfire or present at the site of terrorist explosions.

This history may explain why the toys in Zafar’s work, rather than appearing as symbols of playfulness, embody a sense of pain and trauma. These substitutes for living beings – animals and humans alike – are wrapped in bandages, evoking injury and vulnerability. Just as clothing assumes the shape of the human body, the textured cotton in Zafar’s art adopts the contours of animals or toys. Long before developing this distinctive style, Zafar, as a young man in Karachi, may have seen, heard about or read accounts of bodies discovered in jute sacks, a grim reality of the city’s violent past.

In his imagery, toys are predominantly swathed in gauze, symbolising wounds, injuries and grief. In his latest work (from 2024), showcased in the two-person exhibition at O Art Space, Lahore (December 27–January 6), these toys are wrapped in cotton strips, with their eyes exposed, hence the collective title Eyewitness. Occasionally, other parts of the toys are left uncovered, adding an unsettling dimension to the narratives of suffering embedded in his art.

Zafar’s unparalleled skill, control and mastery of line – the foundational unit of his aesthetic – allow him to convey the illusion of fur, the gloss of pupils, the intricate details of draping and the materiality of folds with remarkable precision. His technique is as inimitable as it is consistent. While there are shifts in scale, posture and the number of characters, the core elements of his work remain steadfast, as evidenced in the recently concluded two-person exhibition.

Khalil Chishtee, the other artist featured in the show, brings a contrasting dynamic with his loosely assembled human figures crafted from plastic. Waxy in appearance and seemingly on the verge of melting – or already melted – these sculptures resemble the fleeting memories of once-living beings. They evoke survivors of a chemical war, the aftermath of a nuclear attack or eerie remnants of another time. The uneven whiteness of layered plastic bags accentuates the sense of process, suggesting fragility and impermanence.

The artist in his labyrinth

These figures, whether standing alone or in groups, sitting or lying down, carry a haunting presence. Their colourless shrouds, dirtied, crumpled and seemingly decayed, heighten the spectral quality of the work. The disintegration and wear suggest the passage of time and the inevitability of death, creating a chilling narrative of post-human existence.

The artist, trained as a sculptor at the National College of Arts in Lahore, is now based in the United States. He has exhibited widely in Pakistan, India, the US and other countries. He began working on this series long before the world became acutely aware of the climate crisis and ecological challenges. The material and fragile state of his figurative sculptures serves as a stark warning about the looming threats to nature, human existence and the environment caused by the proliferation of plastic and other industrial pollutants. Despite their delicate and dissolving forms, Chishtee’s sculptural installations possess an undeniable aesthetic charm.

After dedicating a significant period to this body of work, Chishtee started exploring text as a medium, adding a new dimension to his sculptural practice by bridging the gap between three-dimensional and two-dimensional forms. Using Urdu script, he constructs shapes by interweaving letters and cut-outs of flat materials, such as powder-coated metal.

In his 10 sculptures displayed at the Lahore exhibition, the script takes on diverse forms, becoming a couple in an embrace; a sword and shield; a portrait; a meditating figure; a sprinter; a rider on a galloping horse; two hands held together; and other abstract/ unidentifiable shapes. The fusion of language and form adds layers of meaning to his work, pushing the boundaries of both sculpture and calligraphy.

Khalil Chishtee, an artist with varied experiences, employs a deliberate logic in his choice of letters to construct specific shapes. In his recent exhibition, the text used in his work was drawn from selected words, verses, expressions and phrases. Apart from the self-portrait titled A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away, which reflects on his student days in the mid-1980s, every other piece in the exhibition had its origins in verbal cues. However, these references were not explicit. Some viewers could discern fragments of words or lines, piecing them together to grasp the visual’s deeper meaning. The process often involved a degree of paradox.For instance, the outline of a sword in one piece is formed by fragmented text asserting a commitment to peace and a faith rooted in the message of peace, creating a layered contradiction. In another work, A Victor’s Lament, the figure of a runner is shaped by letters from Muneer Niazi’s renowned poem about a man lamenting missed opportunities, meetings and romantic encounters.

Adeel-uz Zafar and Khalil Chishtee, described in the exhibition invite as “celebrated artists,” are both widely respected and highly sought-after. Their latest works were produced during the Studio RM Artist Retreat, held in collaboration with O Art Space. Both artists left their established workspaces in Karachi and New York City for a month to participate in the retreat.

The retreat presented a creative challenge, as stepping out of the comfort of familiar routines – whether at home or in the studio – can be both disorienting and invigorating. Such disruptions can lead to frustration; even failure. However, they also hold the potential to open unexpected pathways and spark new directions in an artist’s journey. Both Zafar and Chishtee’s work reflects the richness and possibilities of this immersive experience.

Parallel to Zafar and Chishtee, many artists in Pakistan and beyond tend to maintain the artistic identity for which they are celebrated, regardless of whether they work at their studios or away from home. Their creative trajectories often adhere to the comfort of routine, resulting in work that, while technically proficient, shows little evolution beyond minor adjustments. This conformity might stem from external pressures – admirers’ expectations, gallery demands or collectors’ preferences – but can also be driven by something deeper.

The dominance of technique and method may be the root of this artistic stasis. Artists are frequently categorised by their style, which is often intrinsically linked to their chosen medium and method. At a certain point in their careers, many safely settle into a particular approach, method or medium that becomes their defining language – a natural progression of self-discovery. In some cases, this satisfaction diminishes into a reliance on method alone, practised repetitively and possessively. While distinct and recognisable, such methods can become limiting, reducing the creative process to the preservation of a perfected identity rather than exploration and innovation.

In the recent work of Adeel-uz Zafar and Khalil Chishtee, there are few surprises apart from shifts in positions, postures and poetic references. Their methods – meticulous, premeditated and undeniably impressive – seem to dominate their creative processes, sometimes relegating the conceptual core to a secondary role. This intricate balance between method and idea highlights the complex relationship between technical mastery and the pursuit of artistic evolution.


The writer is an art critic, a curator and a professor at the School of Visual Arts and Design, Beaconhouse National University, Lahore

The artist in his labyrinth