Group show: A sole fingerprint

Exhibit featuring work of promising NCA students concludes.

LAHORE: Un-Cut—a  group show featuring the work of 24 promising National College of Arts (NCA) students  concluded on Friday at Fortress Stadium’s The Lounge.

Second-year fine arts student Waseem Solangi said he had been creatively inclined since childhood. Solangi, who is from Dadu, said he was inspired by natural beauty. He said he had been creating art for 15 years. Another second-year student Naila Talpur said she had been fascinated by art as long as she could remember. She said she was inspired by anything that caught her attention or stoked emotion. “I do not choose my subjects. Rather, they choose me,” Talpur said. She said most of her work was in pencil. “I love to witness the transition a blank paper undergoes with each successive stroke of a pencil,” Talpur said.

Jamshoro resident Ali Shariq said he had been inspired by his father, a sculptor, to take his talent seriously. “When I paint, I don’t experience just one emotion or feeling so the image I create reflects that,” Shariq said. He said he painted and erased, fashioned forms and deformed them. “Sometimes, my work is representative. At other times it charts its own course and gradually comes together,” he said. Final-year painting student Fahd Salim said his work was premised on the presence of humans on Earth and what impact it had entailed. Salim said while individual actions were insignificant, collective ones could alter landscapes. “I have painted individual fingerprints in succession using some meditative techniques I became familiar with over the course of an exercise on miniature painting techniques. “A sole fingerprint makes a negligible impact on a canvas. A number of them coming together significantly alter its appearance,” Salim said.

Sana Jafri said she derived inspiration from constant introspection and by experimenting with mediums and concepts in a bid to carve a unique artistic identity. The exhibition was organised by My Art World—a virtual art gallery based in Islamabad.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 14^th, 2016.