Amin Rehman uses the modern English text with sylised Kufic to voice concerns on the politics of globalisation and colonisation.

Using text as image, message and content are some of the parameters of the work, currently on view in a solo by Toronto-based artist Amin Rehman, at Karachi’s VM Gallery. How the artist brings his earlier and ongoing conversations on the politics of globalisation and colonisation, into the current body of work by stretching the parameters of the aesthetic discourse is another aspect of the work.

Much before the current project, which comprises text-based references to issues of global power politics, the imagery was of a different nature. For almost two decades, Rehman produced large-scale black works on board. Haunting, dense and textured, the black encaustic became the context of a prolonged critique on environmental hazards caused by chemical and other toxic waste dumped in the Third World waters.

It was as if the images of ships scratched on to the surfaces were being retrieved from the murky waters of an oil spill. The giant trawlers seemed to be barely contained within the picture frame and metaphors for dominance were thus established. The artist documented stories of child labour and effects of hazardous material handled by the underpaid, exploited labourers at the ship breaking port of Gadani in Balochistan.

From this emerged further exploration into terminology and words such as ‘crisis’, ‘media’ and ‘war’ appeared on the surfaces. ‘Loha Khoar, Loha Toar’ (Iron eaters, iron breakers) was the title of the last solo show by Amin Rehman at the VM Gallery. Eventually, the commentary with words did take centre stage; the thick encaustic was shelved aside for another kind of poetry. This new dynamics, however, letting go of the nostalgia and romance of medium, entered a different, more uneasy discourse on aesthetics.

In the current work, as in works shown in earlier years at the VM (2010) and Chawkandi Art (2008), the question asked often is on the validity of text as work of art and the nature of it. The gallery space establishes whatever enters it as art, but the shifts within discourses of art, are often trajectories that do not fit into the conventional picture frame. If the picture is not there, nor the frame, then whatever is within the narrative must be understood or reflected upon, based on what is in front of us.

In “reading” the work, the viewer starts anew, but also builds on the continuity of dialogue. Words such as ‘What freedom entails’, ‘Imperial delusions’, ‘Great games’, ‘Global empire’, ‘Empire of bases’, ‘Dual state’, ‘Black sites’ and ‘Toxic alliance’ are some of the titles of works, as well as the content (as text) within the work.

As images to be read, they can be viewed as conversations and discussions, which the artist (and the viewer) retains from other readings and conversations, which are then seen in a new dynamics of discourse. Words, on their own, recall the power of protest in speech. The image can inspire, the text can transform. The inspiration and resonance are the same.

The image of the word is an interplay of modern English text, intertwined in a sylised Kufic brings voices of protest within a subversive frame. In Canada, where the artist has exhibted at Mc Intosh Gallery, University of Western Ontario (2012), at Art Site Gallery, Windor, (2012) the relationship to Arabic, is also, as Amin Rehman says, the “unfolding of what is assumed to be a language of terror”. Negotiating with misconception, prejudice and power politics, the artist intervenes with Khattati to renegotiate ‘fragile’ Muslim identities in North America. As it happens, this trajectory also opens the case for debate on tradition versus modetnity.