The relationship between artists and society was portrayed by ten artists who shared their artistic practices revealing many different ideas and themes through distinct mediums in a group show at Artscene Gallery, Karachi. The artworks not only showed their skills, but their emotions, reactions and interactions with the society and understanding of life by their struggle, progress and advancements in life. Thus the resulting works were the reflections of both past and present.

While going through the artworks of the artists' one can feel that while exploring various themes the artists enjoyed their art and also succeeded in providing an enjoyment and awareness to the masses. They created illusions and realities symbolically in paintings having both soft and bold hues. Some artists were asking questions, others had suggestions. But each artist was trying to point out an issue whether political or social. Their themes revolved around history, culture and identity.

The idea behind Hira Zubair's work revolves around death and peace. She felt that these the most important issues in our lives. No matter how much absurd it sounds and how much these both realities of life contradict each other people cannot change reality.

This is an age of chaos and uncertainty around the world as daily we came across the news of natural disaster, violence, wars and crimes creating mayhem and disorder in societies. These societies of various countries attempt day and night to bring back peace in the lives of people who wanted to live a normal life. But struggle for survival made their lives miserable. Citing such situation many opted for other options some felt death is the only escape from all the sufferings and peace can be attained in the form of death.

Javed Iqbal Mughal explored life from childhood to elderly days in his artworks. He discussed the changes in one's life from eating, living, dressing to communication habits. Along the lifestyle our mental health also change and thus our thinking and priorities in life change. And one's perception may totally change according to circumstances faced during life.

Minahil Bulgari's paintings touched a sensitive social issue that strike many people during their lifetime. She described the saying that "time is the best healer". She argued that nothing goes away instead a person just learn to live with the agony and memories of bad times as nothing can be changed and people pretended to be living a normal life but deep inside they were broken.

Moattar Zafar used Islamic geometric patterns for her visual vocabulary as she is much inspired by these patterns and wanted to explore other cultures to expand her thought process. So she can see things much clear and deeply. She talked about freedom in our lives. She saw no freedom in freedom as certain limitations that guide us towards the freedom made it guided freedom not a freedom in literary meaning. According to her everything we saw in our daily life was not real as we saw through a lens of society. The society made rules for us to see things in a particular way and hence we were unable to see the real world around us. All our life we live a guided life followed on specific guidelines.

Nageen Naz lived her childhood again through her paintings. Her works recalled and relived her childhood time which she wanted to live again and again as those moments give relief in times of hardships. Sana Shafiq loves nature and therefore chosen this theme to describe the beautiful relationship of human and nature. She created a mystery in her works by juxtaposing various elements hence she tried to understand the relationship of one's soul with nature.

Raza-ul-Rehman explored time and space in search of truth, which is seemed to be the only answer to the pains and sufferings of one's life. Saleena Shahid used old photograph images in her works to represent nostalgic memories of the past especially childhood. The pictures taken at various occasions remind a person his/her unforgettable moments which they wanted to share with others and also wanted to live those moments again and again. To attain her concept she used many different images in a single painting creating an illusion just like a dream.

Usman Alvi feel the sound around him by the movement of objects as he could nor hear and speak; he enjoyed the beauty all around him and transferred it to his paintings and in this way he connect himself with his surrounding. Zaman Baloch wanted to preserve the love of a shepherd and his cattle in his paintings. He became inspired by the bond between a human and animals. He saw it as the perfect example of peace and harmony in this region.

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Copyright Business Recorder, 2017