Points of Convergence: Photographs that capture curiosity

BNU graduate displays photographs, videos made during his visits to the Walled City


Our Correspondent April 08, 2015
BNU graduate displays photographs, videos made during his visits to the Walled City .

LAHORE: “I was interested in capturing people’s responses to unfamiliar objects found in public places. During one of my visits to the Walled City, I put a camera in the middle of the street and timed it to auto-capture responses of passers by staring towards it,” says mixed media artist Zoya Siddiqui.

The resulting photographs are part of Siddiqui’s work on display at Rohtas II gallery. The title of the exhibition is Points of Convergence.

She says the photographs are meant to capture people’s responses in situations evoking curiosity. “People act differently when they come across unexpected objects like a tripod-mounted camera in the middle of a road. I wanted to capture these responses,” she says.

Besides photographs, the exhibition includes small videos displayed on a loop on small screens in the gallery. Both the photographs and the videos show Siddiqui’s experiences during her visits to the Walled City since January this year.

For another set of photographs, also on display, Siddiqui hired the services of an actor who would pose for her around crowds in various public places in the Walled City.  She says the sites were selected for their ordinariness. These included rickshaws parked in a crowded street, a barber shop and a fruit vendor’s cart.

She says the photographs were different from her earlier work. “This time I have tried to present comical everyday life situations,” she says.

Salima Hashmi, dean of the Beaconhouse National University’s Mariam Dawood School of Visual Arts and Design, says Siddiqui has experimented with several materials and media in her work. She says she liked her work because it is concerned with ordinary people and their experiences. “Her work belies the impression that the younger artists are not connected to their roots,” she says.

Siddiqui graduated from the BNU in 2013. She has since been a part of Teertha International Artists Collective (based in Sri Lanka) and the Vasl Art Residency. Though, she has participated in various group exhibition, the current exhibition is her first solo show.

The exhibition will continue till April 18, 2015 and is open to the public from 11am to 7pm all week except on Sundays.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 8th, 2015. 

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