Art exhibition: Sara portrays themes of fear and anguish

ISLAMABAD: Step into the Rohtas gallery, past the anteroom and take your first right. Nestled in a corner, you see a large white canvas bearing a desperate figure, seemingly transfixed, sinking into a void. Precariously clutching some vestige of a hold, a live electric cable dangles over him, the Sword of Damocles to the Pit. This man’s choices are narrow, his chances slim. Either option means ruin, his mien of anguish captured not in arrest but in facelessness.

Call it what you want, Scylla and Charybdis or the devil and the deep sea, but Sara Khan, the artist exhibiting at the Rohtas gallery, likes to call it “A Rock and a Hard Place.”

In a series of oils and pencil and ink sketches, the NCA graduate  takes on two themes in the respective media, exploring at first the moribund, seemingly stuck lives people tend to lead and in the second the quotidian; everyday life but abstracted and warped as seen by the artist.

Titled ‘Error 404’, the exhibit lives up to its namesake; a stalled sense pervades through the artwork. Having previously shown her work at the Al-Hamra in Lahore, she was invited by Rohtas to exhibit in Islamabad, bringing a new series of sketches along with her.

In one piece she likens individuals to rag dolls and in another, a joyless clown performs to equally displeased children. In one painting titled “Family Portrait” the artist takes on her very family as the subjects, abstracting  the portraitures  to again render the figures faceless, an alligator thrown in the background to represent every family’s lurking issues.

The sketches done in charcoal, ink and pencil take on the form of caricature, everyday scenes of people sitting around tables and talking changed by the exaggerated expressions they wear. The women appear vicious, contorted with their witch-like features while men appear unreal and inhuman. Routine events are almost corrupted with excess and even eating, as depicted by the artist, borders on the bacchanalia.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 29^th, 2010.