Home »Weekend Magazine » ART FACTS: Twisted realities

The attitudes of detachment and dehumanising of people around the world were discussed by artist Fatima Munir in her recent solo exhibition titled 'Albatross' at Canvas Gallery, Karachi. She expressed her opinions about different universal behaviours we came across nowadays. Our societies are engulfed by consumer culture, every act, item or sentiment is transformed into a presentable and purchasable product.

Her artworks were based on themes - the refugee crisis, the Syria situation, peace and war. The sentiments of people goes with the suffering people but when an artist from the same country portrayed the devastation in his paintings people praise his work without realising that he is depicting grim situations which many wanted to be erased from their memory. But the artworks keep them alive increasing pain and suffering of the people who survived the disasters and war. The pictorial depiction of the gloomy atmosphere of the war torn countries suppose to bring forth the sorry feelings of people.

Fatima worked on a couple of series for the current exhibition. A series of six acrylic paint and hand embroidery and inkjet prints on canvas titled "Portrait" portrayed an image of a young girl looking at torn buildings, boats, and life jackets of refugees with embroidery of white flowers while her back was in front of the viewer. Thus she wanted to create an onlooker who was witnessing the various situations at troubled areas of Syria.

Another series of nine inkjet prints on canvas titled "Forever" depicting same image of a young girl looking at torn buildings at a troubled area of Syria and her back was in front of the viewer. But in this series the image of the building and the girl was same the artist only changed the colour of girls cloths and building thus revealing the same situation is going on in other parts of the world and witnessed by other people the same way.

But there was another aspect of this series by displaying the same imagery in different hues Fatima wanted to present the idea that when the same gruesome picture was showed to people again and again whether in a same way or through different angles and colours the image lose its importance and people became insensitive towards it as their minds became over burdened by the same image. Same is the case with our art when people see paintings on similar subjects and themes again and again they lose their interest and instead of increasing awareness the idea shoot back like a boomerang. Hence the basic concept lost somewhere in the art gallery.

Some of the artworks consists of separate frames for individual letters and lines titled 'If not now then when'; 'Exhale'; 'One day, day one'; 'Do not look back'; 'Exit' presented the grim situation of Aleppo. Talking about painting flowers with hand embroidery over the rubble of war in her works Fatima said that it was therapeutic for her. The use of hand embroidery flowers was her way of calming her fears and anxiety. The excessive embroidery and patterns of flowers in her works were used to mask the pain, distress, suffering and agony.

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Copyright Business Recorder, 2017


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