Art attack: The ephemeral and the everlasting

Over a dozen Kinnaird art students graduate

LAHORE: As many as 14 Kinnaird College art students have graduated after completing their final projects in miniature, sculpture and painting.

Fine Art and Design Department Head Samia Jabbar said the industrious students had ventured into the realms of innovation and art over the course of their academic careers. She said noted artists and designers had mentored them to hone their aesthetics.

Ayesha Faheem, one of the students, said she had been inspired by public art like graffiti, messages inscribed on vehicles and billboards. She said these were representative of the public’s mindset.

Faheem said this included both, those who conceived them and those who took pleasure in viewing them. “Many tend to have caustic undertones.

While they come across as light-hearted they can also prove to be enlightening at the same time,” Faheem said. “While I highlight the ephemeral nature of public art around me I am convinced it leaves an everlasting impression on one’s mind,” she said. Faheem said such work unleashed one’s imagination. She said she intended to do just the same with her paintings.

Shazia Alam, another student, said her work was reminiscent of the art of storytelling.

She said this was her most vivid memory from childhood. “Being the eldest child, I was the one who had to keep my siblings entertained. Nothing was more riveting for them than make-believe stories, peculiar occurrences and lengthy narrations,” Alam said.

She said she cultivated the habit of generating narratives and piecing together situations. Alam said viewing a painting unleashed one’s imagination, stoked inquisitively and left them bewildered.

Hajirah Mehmood said her work was premised on solitude. “I dwelled on the theme by fashioning a world from my dream journal.

A world far removed from the constraints of time and space,” she said. Later, Mehmood said, she had incorporated some of her memories in her work.

She said she had attempted to capture memories at their purest—as overlapping dull glimpses—to create a new obscure illusion.

“By using personal photographs, both old and contemporary, I have created a series of memory-scapes which consist of layered multiple perspectives that focus on architectural spaces and incorporate the absence of human presence,” Mehmood said.

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