Exhibition: Artists bring to canvas social issues, culture, memories

‘Collective Thoughts’ featuring 10 artists opens at Nomad

ISLAMABAD: An exhibition of paintings and calligraphy by a group of artists using various mediums opened at Nomad Gallery on Saturday.

The exhibition titled “Collective Thoughts” features works of MA Bukhari, Samina Ali Akhter, Ubaid Syed, Nadeem Ahmed, Tayyaba Aziz, Fizza Siddiqui, Maham Khan, Saadia Hussain, Asadur Rehman and Shafique Farooqi. The works displayed diverse mediums including oil, watercolour and acrylics on canvas.

Aziz’s work highlights the hardships women face and the different layers society puts on them. Bukhari’s Arabic calligraphy uses oil on canvas blending bright colours. His calligraphy seems like a collage of energy-oozing photographs. The entire display features bright and lively colours making the viewer feel energetic just by looking at it.

Ahmed’s work is heavily inspired by trucks but not in the typical truck art form, which makes it stand out. The truck art series amidst his work started in 2012 with the inspiration he got from travelling on the GT Road and Indus Highway. Art on wheels is a unique flavour, which travels with the fascination, spirituality and the inimitable culture of Pakistan. He has regularly exhibited his work at Nomad since 2004.

Saadia Hussain, another artist, said that her work revolves around the collection of her ancestral photographs combined with watercolour techniques. “I have also incorporated the different fairy tale stories, which I heard during my childhood. I have applied the theme of various fairy tales on the surface of the photographs to translate different images into another story”, she said.

On the other hand, Ubaid Syed believes that art is the imaginative assimilation of reality and teleology in images. “The essence of art for me lies primarily in the creation of artistic generalisation and not in representing reality in its concrete form. Form is the identity of content.  In art, it becomes the means of perception of the transcendental and absolute. I attempt to penetrate beyond the visible and then transform my feelings into images – an attempt to show the feelings hidden behind the forms – the invisible behind the visible”, he said.

Tayyaba Aziz describes herself as an abstract cubo expressionist using oil on canvas. “Time is what keeps everything from happening at once. We always compare our present experiences to our dim memories of past experiences. I try to depict psychological time in a complex manner”, she said.

Fizza Siddiqui’s work displayed in the exhibition is striking. She said that these consistently appearing codes are the soul of her visuals, which represent her life. “My work is a dialogue between emotions and experiences, like a page of dairy,” she said.

Maham Khan’s work seems different as she is inspired by the unpredictability of life. “No matter how protective we try to be to save ourselves from the crucial reality of life we have to face the excruciating experiences and cannot get the hold on time. We go through every good and bad phase”, she said.

The exhibition will continue till December 17.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 13^th, 2015.