Art attack: Fine Art students fail to escape the world around them

IVS theses display captures Karachi’s killings, robberies and urban sprawl.

KARACHI: “Take the car but not my husband.”

This plaintive plea may have crossed through every Karachi-ite’s mind when they are facing the barrel of a gun held by a man who wants their money, cell phone and car - or in the worst case scenario, them.

The fear of muggings and kidnappings that has engulfed Karachi - making people keep backup cellphones to give away to the mugger, hiring an entourage of guards and breaking red lights to avoid stopping the car - is evident in the work of Fatima Munir, who topped her Fine Art class at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture this year.

Munir’s deeply personal Fine Art thesis, now on display at the school, is a testament to the terror that grips one’s heart when a motorcycle is too close for comfort, when the rear-view mirror has that persistent figure. On car screens and fabric, Munir’s fear and wish to “protect her children without the conventional ways of guards”, is evident.

A t-shirt in camouflage print bears the name tag ‘Innocent civilian’ and car screens are embroidered with pleas such as ‘jaanvar mat baniye’ [don’t become an animal] and ‘Please do not loot, shoot or abduct’. Munir chose car screens, in particular, since she feels “most vulnerable” when in a car, and as a social experiment, she put them on her vehicle to gauge the reaction.

A dress shirt has several similar pleas stitched on it, emanating from Munir’s concern for her husband - a wealthy businessman who travels a fair bit - and how she is a “wreck” every time he leaves.

Fear and violence emanates in other works produced by this year’s graduates of the Fine Art department. Quratulain Mahar took a cue from her life in Gulshan-e-Iqbal, and the number of sectarian killings. “There is discrimination everywhere,” Mahar told The Express Tribune. “In skin, religion and language.”

Her thesis focuses on prayer caps and how, she explained, when you take an image of the Hajj pilgrimage, all you can see is the same outfit and the prayer cap. “There is no discrimination in God’s house,” Mahar said.

The standout piece in her display is an image of men with their prayer caps in black and white beads, which took six months to translate from a photograph taken at the Awkarwi Masjid in Garden, printed to a billboard size and then into the beaded version.

Aniqa Imran’s work was a personal statement but on another level. Her thesis featured books, wrapped up and locked, to suppess her own love for reading which she was “using as an escape and neglecting real issues.”

Imran’s pain was also bared on Time magazine covers. The magazine blurbs were changed to personal statements, which for her, were the range of emotions she felt as her father was unwell.

The urban chaos of Karachi was reflected in Anum Jamal’s blown up panels featuring pencil drawings inspired by her old apartment in Defence. The centre - a massive exhaust fan - is offset by sewage pipes and windows and doors, all bursting out in the 3D display. Her examiners, she said, “liked that it was architectural and something related to design.” And while ‘Fine Art’ throws up notions of paintings and murals, the work on display at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture is anything but Rameez Rahman’s work with mirrors - a modern retelling of the wonder one may have felt when entering the Shish Mahal at the Lahore Fort in its original glory days - is one of the first striking pieces when entering the school. The work isn’t just winning kudos from peers: gallery curators, such as Sameera Raja and Shakira Masood, have also commented effusively in the guest books.

The theses display of the Fine Art graduating class will continue till December 8.

View a slideshow of the art here.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 4^th, 2012