In eternal hope lie the ‘voices of the soul’

KARACHI: Dedicated to girls’ education campaigner, Malala Yousufzai, and to each and every girl in Pakistan, 17-year-old Nireen Shehzad exhibited a series of photographs at the Ocean Art Gallery to highlight their plight.

Photography, for the artist is a conduit for hope; for bringing forth social issues that are prominent in the country. For Shehzad, the one that demands the most attention is ensuring basic human rights for the women of our society.

Shehzad is fresh, young and bustling with energy and that is exactly what her work displays. She has put up a curious combination of images from her travels exploring cultures and landscapes that are the inspiration behind these images taken through her teenage years.

She wants to be the “agent of change” for the Pakistani women to have the quality of life second to none in the world. In her view, despite the constitutional equality between the sexes in Pakistan, girls and women face different forms of injustices, which undermine their rights as human beings.

Shehzad dedicated the exhibition to Malala because she believes that schooling can enhance the quality of the girl’s lives.

For the young photo clicker, her work symbolises her solidarity with Malala’s heroic fight for girls’ right to education, to carve a niche within their family and communities, to live a life worthy of human dignity and to enjoy personal autonomy and freedom. The exhibition intends to show the world that despite overtly conservative picture painted in the mainstream, a girl living in Pakistan can still achieve.

You can watch a slideshow of pictures from her exhibition here.