Degree Show: Artists give form to their thoughts about life

Two sculpture, one printmaking student display their work at NCA

LAHORE: Two sculpture students and one printmaking student from the Fine Arts Department have displayed their work at the National College of Arts degree show.

“My thesis is mostly about Japanese woodcut block prints. The imagery is about my views and thoughts about the world,” said Sahibzada Sangeen Noor, the only student graduating from the Printmaking Department this year.

Noor, a resident of Peshawar, has displayed seven pieces. Some of the images printed on the Canson paper are about the time spent at school.

“The images are a depiction of what I went through during my childhood,” he said. “We would see our teachers as monsters whenever we would skip our homework.



We would be so afraid of them that we didn’t dare look in their direction,” Noor said commenting on one of his prints.

He said he would often miss school because he was scared of teachers beating their students.

Sohail Tahir, a sculpture student from Hunza, has displayed a metal installation. “I have always worked with junk. I enjoy working on a large scale,” he said. “When I started working on the mushrooms on display here, I tried to explore them in various materials, including latex, plaster of Paris, paper and tissue paper… finally I chose metal,” he said.

Tahir said he tried to make works of art out of everything that he saw; “in this instance, I started working with junk”. “The mushrooms appear soft but they are sharp giving the feel of a paper,” Tahir said.

Sarwat Shafqat, a sculpture student from Lahore, had put four pieces on display. “My thesis is about a life through light inspired by my memories,” she said. Shafqat said she had tried to give life to her memories using light. “My acrylic piece titled Sempiternity is about footprints on the floor lighting up individually. The footprints represent my old friends… and the people who are moving on and those stepping in,” she said.

Shafqat said her work also depicted a lifecycle. Her three acrylic pieces of human figures painted with neon spray paints depicted her friends and their special postures that she could never forget.

Fine Arts Department head Quddus Mirza said the students had experimented and explored new dimensions in their work. “The two sculpture graduates have gone beyond the boundaries of various techniques as well as conventional concepts.” “Noor’s work reminds us that artists are not restricted to their culture or tradition… they can derive inspiration from wherever they want to,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 12^th, 2016.