Curatorial polyphony: ‘Private mythologies’ brings acclaimed artists under one roof

Exhibition covers mixed media, charcoal, acrylic work among others

ISLAMABAD: An exhibition featuring multiple genres of artwork by various acclaimed artists went on display here at a local art gallery on Wednesday.

The exhibition, “Private Mythologies” on displayed at the Satrang Art Gallery features the works of Salima Hashmi, Naazish Ataullah, Ashar Malik, Aanwar Saeed, Mehr Afroz, Nahid Raza, Shireen Kamran, Quddus Mirza, Mansoora Hassan and Noorjehan Bilgrami.

The extremely talented and senior artist, Aasim Akhtar, is the curator of the event.

Gallery director Asma Khan said that it was a privilege to host such senior artists. She mentioned that Satrang Gallery had been home to more than 300 artists in the past few years.

Akhtar said that the exhibition was a wonderful example of curatorial polyphony.

“Polyphony in music is the confluence of multiple voices, independent melodies woven into counterpoint,” he said.

“I have tried to internalise the urgency to generate a situation receptive to complex spaces combining the big and the small, the old and the new, acceleration and deceleration, noise and silence,” Akhtar said.

The chief guest at the exhibition, Salima Hashmi, who also exhibited some of her exclusive work, said that her work was a representation of the October Earthquake.

Her work majorly constitutes mixed media and pigment on handmade rag paper.

Mansoora Hassan, who could very deservingly be given credit for bringing true mixed media in the art scene, said the work exhibited was a part of her private collection and went back to the eighties.

“It is extremely precious because it’s not recent and it is a true representation of mixed media and etching with monoprint”, she added.

Mansoora is best known for the impulsive surfaces created in her early ‘stroke’ paintings.

Mehr Afroz, whose work gained prominence at the exhibition, embraces the daily litany of responsiveness, keenly mapping nature and its cadences as a metaphor for the cyclical nature of human relationships.

She narrates lived experience without the directed specificity of autobiography or storytelling.

Afroz continues the trajectory of concealment, permitting a richness of despair previously unexplored.

The exhibition will continue till November 6.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 8^th, 2015.