Color Gallery — an eye opening experience

While Ufaq Altaf comments on the Mughal lifestyle, Usman Alvi comments on the world around him.

LAHORE: Usman Alvi is a gifted artist who cannot hear or speak, but he is gifted with the art of starting a dialogue through his work. Primarily focusing on gouache on wasli paper, he uses himself and the world around him as his prime subjects.

One finds immense passion and feelings with which the artist has painted. Fighting roosters, peacocks, ducks, toads and dogs portray a rhythmic movement which he cannot hear, but he can feel. “I enjoy the sensory value of movement around me,” conveys Alvi in writing. “This enhances my subject matter. I love seeing beautiful horizons and feel the beauty inside me.”



Alvi’s work reflects his internal musings about the world. He might not be able to hear the noise and music around him, but he is strumming the beat of his own guitar through his paintings. He might not be able to enjoy the mundane aspects of life, but through his work he shows how well acquainted he is with his surroundings and attuned to all the animals and their different sensibilities. Through his work the artist shows his innate ability to attract and experience things that others may fail to do so.

Ufaq Altaf, on the other hand, comments on the dissemination of the Mughal era. The squalor and excessive expenditure that led to their eventual demise is representative of our state today. “Reactions and aspects beyond the glorious Mughal era that demolished the culture and society of that time are reflected in our current situation,” says Altaf. “I use the outline figure of the Mughal emperor as a metaphor of an insect to depict the visual narrative of my work.”



Altaf uses stamps to create geometrical shapes from Islamic history and the dissemination of these shapes is what depicts the downfall of the Mughal’s. She uses monochrome tones, juxtaposed with hues of gold to show dwindling wealth and fortune. The artist depicts the dwindling influence of the emperors by fading the Mughal figure into the shadows of the crowd. Their lack of enthusiasm for culture and art towards the end of their era can also be experienced through the artist’s canvases. Broken motifs in some of the works are symbolic of the lack of interest and dissemination of culture and tradition.

Priced between

Rs35,000  — Rs85,000

Published in The Express Tribune, January 29^th, 2014.

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