Artists from interior Sindh - Mid-crisis: ‘Roti, kapra aur makan’, misprints and our society

NCA alumni put up a joint exhibition, commenting on the country's socio-economic conditions.

KARACHI: Abdul Malik Channa believes in painting the crises plaguing our society. He sketches and paints our basic necessities like roti, kapra aur makan (food, clothing and shelter) and our local 'version' of bread and butter, aloo pyaaz (potato, onion).

Channa's 4-year-old and 6-year-old children hold on tightly to his hand, fascinated to see their father's work put up. “I take basic concepts known to the common man and put them down on paper,” he explains his work. “I just put down all the crises I see around me.”

Along with him, Arif Hussain Khokhar, Nazim Dahiri and Zahid Hussain Soomro arrived at the Canvas Gallery on Monday on the first day of their joint exhibition, News from Sind II. The artists took simple things they see in their towns every day and translated them into comments on the socio-economic conditions and allowed their voices to be heard.

All the four artists are National College of Arts (NCA), Lahore, alumni.

"When Barack Obama became America's president, I thought he was that ray of hope us Muslims were looking for," says Channa, explaining his untitled pencil sketch of the US president, a self-portrait and the American flag. "This shows how my smile is overturned because my hope faded. It depicts the way Obama completely overturned our ideas and the expectations we had of him," he adds.

Meanwhile, Nizam Dahiri uses the concept of misprints and created a moving 3D effect that was popular among the people who came at the show. "I was inspired by Pakistan's history and used the colours green and pink to misprint the Pakistani flag, a ten-rupee note or something as simple as a kettle," he says.

His work uses the misprint technique to show the fluid nature of history. "You always get a blurred vision no matter how clear the picture maybe."

Khokar, on the other hand, says his paintings are usually connected. "I like to use repetition. I repeat my messages and ideas in different paintings because your message never comes across the first time," he says, "You need to say something a thousand times to get noticed or heard."

Khokar uses permanent marker, acrylic and graphite to create sharp black-and-white images. A series that stands out is his amalgamation of east and west: a shalwar with a belt.

Sameera Raja, also an NCA alumni and founder of Canvas gallery, says she followed the work of the four artists from their thesis days at NCA. "This is the second exhibition of this sort at the gallery and it's special because it promotes artists that wouldn't normally get this kind of exposure," says Raja. There are no boundaries or biases and I just want to make sure everyone has the opportunity to show their work and be heard, she adds.

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"I think it's great that we are promoting artists from interior Sindh because these are our crowned jewels," says Munir Memon, an architecture teacher at NED University of Engineering and Technology.

"I enjoyed the exhibition because it was refreshing to see the work of the artists who are influenced by their environment," says Samir Imran, visiting from the Laurent Delaye Gallery in London.

Channa's Obama sketch is Rawindar Kumar's favourite. Kumar, a teacher at NED, says Channa's work is a satire on society and he draws a correlation between the common man and leaders. "Bechare Channa ka hope ulta ho gaya."

Published in The Express Tribune, January 5^th, 2011.