Bright young things

A new generation of artists is celebrated in ArtCiti Gallery’s latest show

Karachi’s ArtCiti Gallery recently hosted an exhibition of six emerging artists, titled ‘Trendsetters’. The works of Rohail Ghouri, Ashair Naeem, Emaan Shaikh, Sadaf Ahmed, Sophia Balagamwala and Saher Shah provided unique insights into Karachi’s contemporary art scene.

Ashair Nadeem’s pointer on canvas pieces tackled a fairly common subject (women), yet were unique in their execution. In his pieces, the female figure was seen in a plethora of reflective and sentient poses, often overlapped, mostly with their head bowed down or faces hidden, perhaps mirroring their inner conundrums. The artist was possibly commenting on the strength women require to be able to live in a male-dominated world, or the inner strength they require to deal with the various roles they undertake in their lives. Nadeem’s technique displayed good skill, as his measured lines and careful pen strokes assimilated to form imagery that seemed digitally generated.

Sadaf Ahmed-01 Untitled Watercolor on Paper 12 x 16 Rs12,000. PHOTO COURTESY: ARTCITI GALLERY

Often, it is unavoidable for artists to acknowledge major life-changes or experiences in their works. Rohail Ghouri’s pointer and gouache on vasli paintings showed us the ‘jump’ in his journey from village life to urban culture, where he strives to find a balance between the two stark modes of living. This was done by combining 2D miniature paintings with 3D images of village life (rendered in lines), and an occasional overlapping of elements of the city (such as tiles and polished doors) rendered in gadrung (colour). Interestingly, like Ashair Nadeem’s work, Ghouri’s pieces also had the appearance of being digital.

Emaan Shaikh’s pieces displayed natural vegetation in graphite on paper. Shaikh’s attention to detail was mesmerising, as she meticulously rendered each leaf and stem, while addressing the softness and rawness present in organic material. Her paintings also reminded one of vintage Chinese landscape prints. Shaikh’s work brought with it a sense of peace associated with nature, while the overpowering array of leaves and strong barks displayed nature’s strength.

Emaan Shaikh-05 Cloud Cover Graphite on Paper 17 x 20 Rs30,000. PHOTO COURTESY: ARTCITI GALLERY

Sadaf Ahmed’s dreamy watercolour art was a result of her interest in the ethereal world. Bold splashes of colour, lines and forms merged together to comment on a number of profound ideas. Drawing spontaneously to tap her unconscious mind, Ahmed’s pieces explored cosmic images, inspired by the Hubble telescope’s solarscapes of the universe. In other works, the artist used the butterfly as a metaphor for change, metamorphosis, transformation, and ferocity — their fragility belies their strength as they migrate thousands of miles through challenging weather. Perhaps it is this contrast that the artist sees in her self, as well as in human beings in general. Ahmed also explored the ‘dream state’ in her pieces, which blur boundaries between reality and imagination.

Seher Shah’s gouache-on-vasli miniature paintings were rich in symbolism and skill, as well as visually delightful. By incorporating delicately rendered human hair as part of her artworks, Shah commented on the idea of ‘femininity’. To Shah, hair has a strong aesthetic value and is also associated with the nature of being a woman, often also ascribed as being a symbol of beauty. For this reason, she sees hair as something very treasured, secure, protected, and thus, often hidden. Shah often composed unrelated things with hair — for example, a braid intertwined with a hand-held mirror, hair sprouting from a grasshopper/cricket, and hair forming the horns of a bull. Is she thus commenting on the strength of a female and her act of often judging herself by her appearance?

Standing out from the rest in form and medium, Sophia Balagamwala rendered humorous, abstracted forms in her oil on canvas paintings. While the other artists’ works focused on realism to a great extent, Balagamwala painted adorable, round-faced, mustachioed men with titles such as ‘Colonel Sharifa’ and ‘Ripemen’. Considering she had also painted a custard apple titled ‘Red Sharifa’, was the artist forming a strange hybrid of human and fruit in her works, thus commenting on gluttony, self-indulgence and voraciousness? Or did it contain political overtones? Nevertheless, her works had a strong Modernist appeal to them.

Ashair Naeem-04 Pointer on Canvas 28 x 32 Rs45,000. PHOTO COURTESY: ARTCITI GALLERY

While ‘Trendsetters’ contained an eclectic mix of art that at first seemed too diverse to be put together under one roof, a closer inspection revealed that the works had common underlying themes, or were visually congruent. Seeing that the artworks were fresh and unique, it can be safely said that many of the participating artists will soon be the ‘trendsetters’ for the new generation of artists/art-movements.

Shanzay Subzwari is an artist and art writer based in Karachi.

She tweets @ShanzaySubzwari

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, September 20^th, 2015.