Innovations in art depict Pakistan’s reservoir of talent
By: Anil Datta
Karachi: There’s absolutely no dearth of talent in Pakistan, including artistic talent. To see this for oneself, one must visit the 11th Emerging Talent Exhibition at the VM Art Gallery, which is hosting the emerging talent art show for the 11th consecutive year.
The exhibition showcases the works of fresh arts graduates from all over the country. Fifteen institutions out of the 18 invited turned up. The show, organised by the VM Art Gallery, is based on 150 works of fresh graduates.
Being a show of fresh, young artists, it also depicts new trends and innovations in art that normally aren’t much heard of.
The very fact that the show has been going on for 11 long years is testimony to the tremendous reservoir of talent our country could boast of.
The exhibition showcases talent even small towns, apart from metropolises like Lahore or Karachi, places that don’t carry much of glamour with their names but which have the same reservoir of talent.
For one, there is a work by Sidra Arif from the art department of the University of Gujrat. It is the transverse section of a tree with the tissues forming various letters and figures, subject of course, to the viewer’s imagination.
The tissues forming the figures may have their own accounts to narrate, their own feelings to convey. It could not be included in any known forms of art. It is a form by itself. School of Art, titled ‘A Dozen Expressions’. It comprises a range of facial expressions connotative of moods of a human. Melancholy, grief, anger, love, a jocular dispensation, happiness, amusement – all these are painted most meticulously on 12 egg shells in the minutest of detail.
Then there’s another interesting innovation by Sarmad Shar of the Centre of Excellence in Art and Design, University of Hyderabad. It shows a big multicoloured bird in flight with the body and the plumage made of the city’s leading English language dailies, including The News. Also, there is a form of art perhaps never or seldom heard of before. It is a reptilian figure formed with the assemblage of nuts, bolts and screws, and is titled ‘Child Abuse’. It is by Shazia Khatoon of the Karachi School of Art.
The exhibition is hosting works from Islamia University, Bahawalpur; Centre of Excellence in Art and Design, University of Hyderabad, Jamshoro; Central Institute of Arts and Crafts, Karachi; Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi; Karachi School of Art; North City School of Art, Karachi; Beaconhouse National University, Lahore; Kinnaird College forWomen, Lahore; National College of Art, Lahore; University of the Punjab, Lahore; Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan; University of Peshawar; University of Balochistan, Quetta; and Fatima Jinnah University for Women, Rawalpindi and Islamabad.
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