Ambiguous response

All the artworks were ambiguous and open-ended in a group exhibition titled "Ever Let the Fancy Roam", at Chawkandi Art Gallery, Karachi. While going through the paintings one feel that each work has its own narrative and it was on the viewer's judgement and imagination what he/she understands from the particular artwork. Thus viewer's respective perceptions of reality were examined at the show.
Viewers can interpret artists' artworks in many different ways thus the exhibition created an ambiguous response. The works had various themes and subjects thus viewers' had to go through multiple narratives in a single show.
Syeda Haya Zaidi struck the sensitive cord in people's life that is joined with their basics of life like hope renewal and religious code of conduct that everybody has to follow. She portrayed her themes of feminism and mysticism with a blend of symbols in contemporary settings. She used intricate art of miniature painting combined with mix media to achieve her desired expressions.
She was more interested in the process of image that show different perceptions of a subject, which changed depending on individual experiences from viewer to viewer.
She seemed to enjoy using many different mediums in a single creation. And by combining many layers working in detail she questions the suppression of feminism in a third world society. She reflected on variety of women issues by telling multifarious stories through her works from human emotions of lust, greed and helplessness and hope to the role of female sexuality in our society. Hence she focused on socio-political issues and the effects of such issues on women.
Maria Khan's a little strange portrait of elderly women with large eyes, wide shoulders, strong necks, bulky bodies and enhanced features having a dreamy ambiance gazed upwards or towards the viewers.
These characters were embellished with flowers, berries and fruits as if they were in a mystic garden dressed in printed fabric.
The fictitious and exaggerated details add interest to her paintings. Mostly figures were painted against dark starry background meaning at night under the sky - a time when the world fall a sleep but our desires still strong and awake.
The paintings were in black and white with a hint of red on the clothes of women showing their desire to look beautiful and their facial expressions showed that they were self-admiring. The artist wanted to convey that it is everybody's right to feel and look beautiful at any age and at any time in life.
Maria's figurative paintings mainly portrayed woman's suppressed lives in our society. She talked about the rights of women living with their own conscience and not being dictated by the society how to live a life. Thus she depicted female figures as they wanted to be not as the society wanted them to be.
Mohsin Shafi talked about people's religious zeal and their yearning for liberation at the same time. His artworks were amalgamation of pictures taken from multiple sources in a single work created a narrative of his own. By doing so he tried to establish a collective understanding regarding certain issues.
By using pictorial language he engaged local as well as global perceptions about those issues as familiar images help in understanding the problem better. He has taken most of the photographs by himself other than sharing pictures from peers and friends and through social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram and newspapers.
He created layered collages from these collected photographs and created new images that showed social commentary to the viewers. Thus he put myths and realities side by side. He translated and interpreted sub-cultures in his works among images and spaces. Most of the works had societal and political connotation. Hence the body of work focused on the interconnectivity of tradition, modernity, culture, religion and sexuality.
Sara Khan explored a broad spectrum of feelings, emotions and ideas that were evoked by our senses. There was a diverse blend of emotions directly or indirectly reflected in her works. She explored diverse mythological patterns and beliefs. She seeks to interpret and document the duality of nature: stillness and movement, chaos and order, eternity through adaptability.
There was an intricate, swirling choreography, not completely devoid of conflict, but nonetheless serene in its path towards survival. She celebrated the joy and beauty found in different objects which silently tells a whole range of human legacy embedded with them capturing what once belonged to a person.
She takes the experiences of life as her inspiration. Surroundings, people, gestures, facial expressions, colour palette and environment play an important role in her works. Her work seemed to revolve around the mystery of the combination of reality and fantasy which she wanted to solve.
The artworks were a compendium of personal spaces, where humans are living and interacting every moment of their existence. Relationships move along in parallel, being broken up and rebuilt again and again with the passage of time. The surfaces juxtaposed one on top of another with carefully drawn lines and details in miniature style.
Suleman Khilji's artworks reflected figures of common people we interact daily during our routine life. We came across these people on the roads when we were travelling by foot or in a vehicle but we just pass by without noticing their mysterious lives.
Fascinated by the characters he encountered living on the road or just passers by the paintings showed various different and unique characters living around us.
He transformed characters according to his observations setting the composition in contemporary situations giving his artworks a different aspect of life in such condition.
He connected his paintings with the modern world but found no difference in the physique and condition of people he encounter daily walking, sleeping and weeping around him on the streets and lanes of the busy cities.
Re-situating and revisiting the contents in the light of his own contemporary vision he considered his work having its own context and mode of composition or execution.