Group exhibition: Six budding artists go ‘Beyond Today’

One of the artists collected pictures of Hazara community victims to explore his own history.

LAHORE: A group exhibition by six budding artists titled ‘Beyond Today’ is under way at the O Art Space Gallery with artworks ranging from representation of reality to depicting stories of the Hazara community.

Ahsen Javaid’s work deals with ideas of originality, reality and representation. The artist has been using various methods to crop, cut and paste references from a variety of media, including newspapers, magazines, popular imagery and history, to create art pieces.

His work stems from a notion that reality and representation are all relative terms and cannot be assumed to form a universal understanding, since information reaches us as a collection of cropped ideas.

“It depends on how well we paste them together to form a picture of our very own reality. But human brain works in various ways and tries to find similar ideas to validate its own; hence together we start establishing shared realities and conventional understandings,” Ahsen explains. “I use my practice as a tool to critique and comment on such understandings and construct a new meaning to generate a dialogue among work, viewers and myself.”

Another artist Syed Hussain’s work is about collecting pictures of victims from the Hazara community in an attempt to explore his own history, identity and stories.

“Belonging to the ethnic Hazaras of Pakistan, I have always been the odd one out due to my physical features, accent and tone,” he says.

While travelling across the country, the artist claims to have faced several questions, gazes, raised eyebrows and odd gestures just because he did not fall within the ‘definition’ of identities his countrymen are accustomed to.

Hussain says this firstly led him to anger, disassociation and then isolation. “Ultimately I tried to understand what my ancestors went through decades and centuries ago and this search led me to my family’s old, legal documents having stamps, dates, typed and handwritten information, marks, signatures, thumb impressions and mutilated pictures,” he added.

He said the process aroused a sense of curiosity in him to dig more and decode the identities and stories behind the Hazaras. His practise to date has originated from the traditional Indo-Persian opaque watercolour technique known as ‘Gud Rung’.

Since the technique is concerned with layering of colours, it is challenging because each area requires equal attention, patience and consistency.

Unab Sumble’s work in acrylic and ink on canvas is about associations and friendships formed in daily life with people who are not really family members but feel just as important and valuable.

“They may not always be visible or occupy the top of my mind but their absence is always sourly felt. It is about such people who have left a reflection on my life and taught me lessons I might not have known otherwise,” she says.

Her project is a tribute to all those immensely important, invisible people we find around us every day.

Artist Usman Khalid’s work is about drawing, painting and experimenting with portraits and trying to explore what lies within. He has always been fascinated with the idea of viewing his life from someone else’s eyes or perspective.

“The models that have posed for these artworks were human. Each of them is different from one another, representing two lives, two bodies and two very different personalities,” he said.

“I try to make sense out of all this in the work that I do, the way I do it on the other hand, solely depends upon how it makes me feel.”

Hamid Ali Hanbi’s work explores the diversity of colours with certain concepts and beliefs. One of his paintings titled ‘Colours of Paradise’ depicts 70 women in bright and colourful burkas.

Ahsan Memon’s work in graphite and charcoal on paper deals with concept deception, human behaviour and first impressions of people we meet every day.

The exhibition will end on April 14.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 5^th, 2017.