Not resigning to fate: Paintings portray resilience, power of belief

Art pieces by Sarah Hashmi, Dua Abbas attract enthusiasts

ISLAMABAD: A painting exhibition by two young artists highlighting resilience and power of belief opened at Satrang Gallery on Wednesday.

Titled, “The Glowing Embers Within”, the exhibition features artworks by Sarah Hashmi and Dua Abbas Rizvi.

Asma Rashid Khan, director of the gallery, said that in the past three years, the gallery has hosted 35 exhibitions, diverse in concept as well as execution. “Satrang has opened conversations amongst the various components of the art world and expanded its reach by developing new art enthusiasts; its open space allowing visitors to engage and interact with the art,” she added.

“The works of these accomplished painters seek to examine the resilience and sustainability of belief,” said Zahra Khan, curator of the gallery.

Hashmi portrays vulnerability and hardship in her brightly-coloured paintings. Despite their apparent plight, the subjects exude a luminous glow. Instead of resigning to fate, they stand tall, tethered to an unsinkable belief in a higher power.

“The series that I am currently working on is titled, ‘That which does not exist, enters where there is no crevice’. This verse is taken from Lao Tzu’s book called Toe Te Ching and it inspired me because it is based on a very universal truth, that God, hope and faith exist everywhere,” said Hashmi.

She is working on crowds of people, who are apparently together, yet aloof and distant from each other. “I am trying to depict each individual in the crowd as a separate troubled soul; however, I am also giving a hint of faith and hope through the use of patterns,” she added.

“Irrespective of where they come from and in what state of completeness they reach you, stories leave you with a heap of symbols and motifs and inexplicable bits that become as lodged in your memory as the other, more explicable bits,” said Abbas, about her work.

She dresses her present-day models in makeshift medieval attire; sometimes, their regular clothes do as well. The props are odd and shiny objects, she said that she likes to gather; sometimes, they are commonplace objects that she insists on giving symbolic value.

The backdrops are clearings, corridors, nooks and crannies that she has photographed at home or on travels. “…Any sight that seemed to have a story or could just lend itself to a jumbled-up re-enactment of one, as my work is a means for me to re-enact stories,” Abbas said.

Inaugurated by the Austrian Ambassador Blaha Brigitta, the exhibition received appreciation from art lovers at the opening.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 13^th, 2015.