Exhibiting talent: 73 students of KU put up impressive annual degree show

Visual studies department students showcase thesis after putting in months of work

KARACHI: The wall chalking and phrases we see in our daily lives on the roads and television screens were flooded on the wall of the visual studies (VS) department of Karachi University (KU) as a graduating student, Umer Tariq, displayed his final year project.

He was displaying his work at the degree show of the 14th graduating batch of the department of VS.

Tariq, with fine arts as his major, took light and shadow as his medium and worked on the idea of showing the lighter side of the city. His project was displayed along the projects of his classmates at the VS annual degree show.

"We only see negativity all over the walls and TV channels but we should promote positivity, which also lays in us," said Tariq, while explaining why he used scrap material to build structures in the form of a man and put a moving light that depicted the man as a shadow on the walls of the city.



Inspired by the Harry Potter movie series, another student, Rahma Waqar, used mirrors as her thesis subject. "As a kid, I always thought that mirrors have stories to tell and each mirror takes something from our reflection," she said, while revealing the inspiration behind her idea to use mirrors.

Giving an example of how a scratched video cassette's visual becomes damaged, she said that she wanted to show how mirrors reflected a damaged reflection in a similar manner.

She scratched and made sketches on the mirrors and used acid to make them look deformed in one of her art pieces, which she named as 'Fractured Reflections'.

A textile design graduate, Ujala Sajal, worked on sunsets and took around six months to complete her annual project with screen printings and display, while another six months were invested in research and sketch books.



Another textile graduate, Syeda Zainab Rizvi, chose shed skins of snakes as her thesis topic and visited around 10 snake owners in the city for research purposes. "There are thousands of species of snakes but the shed skin is the same of every snake as the skin leaves the colour as soon as it sheds," she explained, while showing the real snake skin samples she had exhibited at her stall.

Trying to bring a revolution in transportation, an industrial design student, Noman Raza, designed an electric scooty naming it as, 'Scooto'. The idea was to make an engineless motorcycle to contain pollution. "I have the idea to use a lithium ions dry battery in it, while a hub motor will be used in the bike," he said, showing his research and motorcycle model.

External examiners from professional fields also visited the degree show to judge the work of the 73 graduating students from five sections of the department, which includes fine arts, graphic design, film, industrial design, Islamic arts and textile design.

A total of 24 students graduated from the graphic design programme, five students from fine arts, 19 students from textile design, nine students from industrial design and 15 students in film. Meanwhile, one student graduated from the Islamic Arts programme. Further, 10 students of architecture will be showing their work on December 18.

The students have represented Pakistan on various international forums, which demonstrates their outstanding capabilities, shared VS chairperson Prof Durriya Kazi. "An average employment rate of KU VS students is around 90%," she said, adding that Pakistan should focus on design as graduates of art and design are the most influential people in today's world.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 15^th, 2016.