Making a statement: Narratives Untold – catching war and nostalgia on canvas

Mehreen and Aqib raise questions about the times we live in.

LAHORE:

Narratives Untold, featuring the latest collection of art work by Madiha Mehreen and Muneeb Aqib, opened at Gallery 39K on Friday. Their works have previously been exhibited as part of The Door at Gallery 39K and the Young Artists Exhibition at Alhamra Art Gallery in 2013.

These recent graduates of Hazara University, Mansehra, make a deep statement through their art.

Aaqib uses graphite and gun powder. His works incorporate images of war and play with large white spaces. Mehreen, on the other hand, prints digital images and places them in alarm clocks in an attempt to address her relationship with memories of the houses and buildings she has lived in.

Gallery 39k Proprietor Abdullah Qureshi says, “The exhibition is very special to me. It is exciting when new and fresh voices from all over the country come forward to showcase contemporary art.”

He says it had also been a huge commercial successful. “We had 12 pieces almost all are sold out,” he said.

Mehreen says, “Association with places affects me deeply as I belong to an army family. I develop a strong relationship with places I live in even though I am aware I would lose them.”

Mehreen says she draws fantasies through digital media with changing levels of connection with reality. She said she looks for relationships between connection and separation, the image and self. “Watches stop once and forever – reflect the relationship between me and empty walls. “I aim to connect my audience with contemporary life through technology. I have tried to create a fundamental reality that people can experience through their perception.”

Aaqib, quoting Susan Sontag, says, “Ever since cameras were invented in 1839, photographs have kept company with death. Because a camera is literally a trace of something brought before the lens.”  Aaqib says working with war footage as a reference for construction of drawings in pencil and gunpowder, the drawings are all intense parts gathered from exploration. But they also represent a determination to build urban legends rather than realities - narratives rather than moralistic illustrations, he says.

“The work becomes more than a narration - it becomes a trailer for a film that reveals certain contents, opens certain feelings or memories,” he said. Aqib says he chose to work with gunpowder and pencil on paper as the medium reflected the volatile conditions of the subject he worked on. “It reflects the unmistakable qualities of photographic material supply, but at the same time, strives to protect the qualities of materials used to create a work of art,” he says.

“The subjects for my drawings come from magazines – I study and transpose the faces of these people in my work. Such an approach gives pause to the never-ending shuffle of news media. My goal is to capture humanity that connects all victims of war,” he said.

The exhibition will continue till April 15.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 31^st, 2014.