An elephant in the room

Artist uses elephant analogy to personify the rage he feels living within Pakistan’s politics and society.

ISLAMABAD:

An unfulfilled childhood dream of riding elephants inspired artist Kausar Iqbal to immortalise the animals in his latest collection of miniature paintings. The collection, featuring the rage within Pakistan’s politics and society, will be exhibited at Rohtas Art Gallery from October 26 to November 5.

The artist uses elephants as the main medium to highlight issues because he finds it to be a very contradictory animal. The elephant’s paradox is that while it is humble and gentle in nature, it can display violent streaks from time to time. The name of the elephant family is Pachydermal, which means thick-skinned animals.

Using this analogy, Iqbal personifies the frenzy he feels living in such critical circumstances.

“I symbolise the contemporary situation of man and how his existence is questioned every day by unexpected series of events,” he said.

“Pachydermal highlights what I call ‘our today’ and how we unconsciously live in a daily bread and butter of violence and uncertainty,” Iqbal explained.

The Peshawar-born, Islamabad-based, artist feels very sensitive towards the environment he has been brought up in. He says that the only way he can project his feelings regarding the distraught political situation is through his art.

Ever since he graduated from National College of Arts in Lahore, Iqbal has exhibited paintings all over Pakistan in solo or group exhibitions. He only got international acclaim recently with a show in Paris.

In capturing the essence of the major issues being faced by our society the artist not only depicts the political instability but also raises concerns regarding the loss of identity and the banal ideology of pre-supposing events.

Iqbal works with his composition very eloquently and, even in pieces that have very minimalistic work on them, the importance given to detail is so prominent that the empty spaces around do not overpower the painting. Using multiple mediums such as gouache, pencil, siyah-qalm, safed qalm and neemrang on the traditional vasil, the artist shows mastery in his use of colour and skill in sketching.

He has enhanced the elephant trunk because the rage and energy coming out of the trunk is tremendous and symbolises the rage and violence he witnesses in society. He has used symbolism of the barcode to accentuate the undefined wrath in Pakistani society.

Even though he has picked up a very grave topic to depict, the greens and reds infused into the generic black and white painting add beauty and life to the paintings, softening the subject matter.

It’s almost like a sugar coating on a very bitter medicine.

Priced between Rs20,000 and Rs50,000 the pieces should add to the intellectual and aesthetic pleasure of any collector.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 27^th, 2010.