Pointing to amorous yearning of the human spirit | Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF)

Pakistan Press Foundation

Pointing to amorous yearning of the human spirit

Pakistan Press Foundation

Karachi: A really interesting and unique art exhibition, curated by Amra Ali and featuring works by Marium Agha, opened at the Chawkandi Art gallery on Thursday evening.

The exhibition is based on 12 of Agha’s works about thoughts centering around sensuality. It is a show based on the random — and remote — association of ideas and much is left to the imagination of the viewers.

As Agha says, “I leave things up to the imagination of the readers. It is entirely up to them what inferences, what conclusions they draw.” And sure, there are umpteen conclusions one could draw, depending on the extent of fertility of one’s imagination.”

For instance, there’s a work titled “Eat my heart out”. It depicts an assortment of animals in a pristine setting. On enquiring from the artist as to what it was all about, she said it could be taken to be connotative of flesh and the scramble for it. In other words, connoting sensuality. Anyway, it is entirely the viewer’s discretion to draw a conclusion.

Then there’s another work titled “The tutor of love and the textbook of adultery”, showing a whole lot of animals in human attire. One would, at first sight, associate the work with some nursery rhyme with jacket-wearing rabbits and hated animals, but again, according to Agha, it points towards the amorous in the human spirit. All the works are mix media.

Then there’s a video section showing the sea and a collection of women’s attire, something that is supposed to connotative of her metamorphosis through various stages of life.

Marium Agha, a graduate of the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, graduating in 2006, later received further training in art, doing her master’s in the subject from Central St Martin’s, London.

She has held a number of shows all over Pakistan and some overseas as in London and Amsterdam.

Agha finds her theme in the interpretations of visual Imagery, concepts and theories which revolves around the trajectories outlined by borrowed cultures and ideals of self and others. Using yarn as her primary medium, she tries to make sense between the given real and supposed representational of everyday living.

The exhibition runs up until March 15. It is a must-see for especially those with a fertile imagination.

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