Emotional art: A loud journey of expression

Rabeya Jalil’s works evoke response and strongly affect the viewer

KARACHI: When you walk into the Koel gallery, you are touched. Young artist Rabeya Jalil’s artworks are emotional and expressive when it comes to comment on social issues.

The exhibition, titled ‘Name. Place. Animal. Thing.’ is loud and leaves a powerful impact on the viewer. The works seem to be talking and drawing attention of them. And they aim to speak only the truth. For instance, the masterpiece titled ‘The Proposal’ seemed to be a comment on the mechanism of marriage proposals in our society. The artwork is divided into six pieces and is quite intriguing. It manages to get the viewer engaged with the help of its crudity.

In one of the six pieces, a math problem is solved on a paper. Another depicts an Urdu inscription reading ‘yeh meri likhai hai’ [this is my handwriting]. The last one shows a stern face, which is a symbol for the to be mother-in-law who judges a girl on all possible aspects - her ability with math, handwriting, etc - and then finally decides if she is the ‘perfect one’ for her son. The fact that even today sending a rishta and choosing a woman for marriage the ‘traditional’ way remains the not-to-be-violated territory of the man or his family is brilliantly commented on in this piece.

The way the artist has made her work look untidy and messy has a remarkable effect on the viewer. This attempt at drawing ugliness is a comment on the ugliness of society itself. For example, the artwork titled ‘Nurturing to kill’ is a perfect depiction of how might is right. A cat is drawn above a smaller animal. A mightier creature is above the cat and the human figure supersedes all of them. This speaks of the brutal, callous and selfish nature of the human kind. We nurture anything for our benefit and later kill it when it serves its purpose.

Another interesting work related to the cave spider which, according to Islamic tradition, acted as an assistance from God for the Prophet (pbuh) and his companion when the Quraish persecutors were after their lives. However, in this artwork, the spider serves as only a web-producing creature and not a saviour - hence the title. In this case, the web is that of education. The illustration contains a page of an English, Math and Urdu notebook above a blank page - an obvious symbol for art. It seems to be a comment on how our parents discourage us from taking up art instead of the standard ‘successful’ subjects. This particular artwork is the suppressed voice of the many young artists who are killed by their very families.

Jalil talks about how individuals choose a ‘mutated self’ in her artist statement. “We kill the artist in ourselves because society thinks art’s not right for us. And it is not just about art. This is a symbol for all the choices we make in our lives based on societal expectations.”

Her works are on display till February 23.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 19^th, 2015.