Munawar Ali Syed's expressive installations depicted sensitive and clear perspective of life comprising some hidden and revealed social issues in a solo exhibition titled "Ankahi" at Canvas Gallery, Karachi. Inspired by the rural life and traditional lifestyle Munawar's body of work has strong rural references and the intention was to translate the traditional imagery of living in to a contemporary expression.
He conveyed his concepts and views to other people through his four independent installations that comprised of unique set of materials and metaphors. These art pieces initiated a dialogue and communicated with the viewers creating awareness regarding ecological issues.
He used everyday usable things that exist all around us that is he literally used everything from brass, plastic, rubber, metal jewellery, toys, motherboard chips, resin, rice, mung daal, masoor daal to aluminium casts.
He explored various materials and different ideas in search of greater meaning and thus ended up creating his own expressions through his own experiences. His ideas taking shape of images in his installations and carvings thus reflecting his mind and life experiences.
He observed and expressed signs in a symbolic way, thus speaking via images connecting to people by means of installations.
He incorporated his own impressions in his work. His personal thoughts moulded into messages that may relate to many other people.
In a series of five installations titled "Where Lies My Soul" and a unique installation "I Saw it Once in China" he transformed his observations into images which anyone can relate to he used buffalo as a rural life symbol and decorate it with urban daily use items which were thought to be essential while living in a city. This resulted in the change of face of the buffalo meaning the change of life in rural areas affected by urban living.
But people do want to know a deeper meaning of existence. They wanted to stay in touch with their roots which were near Nature away from a materialistic world typical of a metropolis.
And the investigation into indigenous materials led Munawar to a path which helped him in developing the awareness of real life.
His practice of material exploration helped him in search for meaning of life. In some of his works you can see items specifically pointing towards certain basics of life around which life on earth revolves. As the Nature is
the most integral part of our life.
The series "All is Not Black" in aluminium cast showed buffalos in books and books on buffalo's heads indicating that educated life without rural life is nothing because both are integral part of life they must go side by side supporting each other to attain a good quality life. Forgetting one will result in disintegration of certain values and ultimately society will suffer as a whole.
The series of carvings on old story books titled "Ankahi" also pointed to the fact that books once companion of educated people nowadays have left behind just like rural lifestyles.
The computer age has left behind all the good natural things in quest of higher knowledge and power.
Viewers can have clear view of the surrounding atmosphere regarding people and society in another series titled "Bhook".
Made from materials such as resin, rice, daal, metal, rubber and plastic revealed that the books give knowledge about all these materials and many of them came from rural areas they were grown there for urban world to consume and live healthy.
(The writer can be reached at [email protected])
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