Everything must go!: IVS students hold Art Garage at Sanat

Two-day event held to fund their trip to Germany.

KARACHI: Something fancy would not work for us, said Sharmeen Rizvee, one of the 12 Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture (IVS) students, whose work was displayed at the Art Garage exhibition, on why they named their exhibition Art Garage.

Sanat Art Gallery hosted the exhibition, the proceeds from which will be used to fund the students' trip to Germany. Five members of the group were present at the exhibition on Friday and one of the students, Fareeha Nanjiani, explained that the students are selling their school assignments.

Eidi envelopes, hand-embroidered handbooks, paintings of all kinds, both portraits and landscapes, in mixed mediums, handmade jewellery, laptop covers and pouches and printed diaries were put on sale. The show is Nanjiani's brainchild. "Actually, we wanted to fund our upcoming trip to Germany," she shared. "[We want] to visit the Heimtextil event that takes place each year. This time the date falls in the first week of January, 2017.

Another student, Ziaur Rehman, came forward to explain that this will be an educational trip for the students of IVS's final-year textile batch. "It will help us to do our mini-research as well with our upcoming thesis project," he said.

Student Anum Atiq views it as an opportunity to not only visit this international trade fair but also to see German architecture and everything else that Europe has to offer. "Through the Schengen visa, I might venture towards Italy and sight-seeing," she said.

The reason they brought their exhibition to Sanat is because 'none of the other galleries were as kind as they were', according to Rizvee and Atiq. "They offered us a free space considering we are students," they added.

However, financially, things did not go according to the plan. Collectively, the group earned a mere Rs40,000 on the first day of the exhibition but with qawwal Amjad Sabri's death, the exhibition did not take off as they had hoped it would. The students require around Rs0.2 million per person for their trip.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 25^th, 2016.