May 10, 2003

Syed Tauqeer Abbas goes to the art exhibition of the NCA faculty members in Lahore and comes back with mixed feelings

Exhibitions of every type, scale and standard are arranged around the country, but to see the works made by the individuals involved in shaping the future artists is a special event. Scope X, held from April 24 to May 8 at the NCA’s Zahoorul Akhlaq Gallery, was one of these. The exhibition comprised works by the teachers of the National College of Arts.

Yet, strangely and sadly, the show this year coinciding with the 9th convocation of the college was not as exciting as the past exhibitions of this kind have been. Traditionally the exhibition is supposed to present the new creations of the members of the staff, but in the present exhibition, objects were included, which have been displayed before. For instance, One-and-a-Half” by Durre S. Ahmed, head of the Academics department, was shown in a previous exhibition, and a mixed-media piece by Sabah Husain, visiting associate professor in Fine Arts, was made in 1993.

It appears odd, but one has to refer to the designation of the participants while discussing their art works. Since this was the way all the exhibits in the three rooms of the gallery were labelled. Presumably, realizing that the NCA is a government body, the emphasis was given to the official positions of the participants, rather than providing the information about the title, material or the year of execution of their works.

The only astonishing and encouraging thing was that the grades of these artists, architects, designers and academicians, were not mentioned, and were left to the imagination of the visitors.

At the beginning of the exhibition, two landscapes by Khalid Iqbal, professor emeritus, were displayed. These small works affirmed the great stature of the landscape painter working in an individual manner. Though the work of art is believed to be a joy forever — and the paintings of Khalid Iqbal testify to it — these works have been exhibited many times at this venue and even at the same spot. This brought a sense of repetitiveness to the show. Maybe for the gallery at the NCA, it was easier to fetch these pieces from its permanent collection, instead of making the efforts to request latest canvases from the master painter, who is still producing works of remarkable quality.

Next to his paintings, two reliefs, made by Talat Ahmed and Dabir Ahmed were installed. Although the former was trained as a sculptor and the latter is known as a ceramicist, it was felt that the professional practices of the two (wife and husband) are converging into one. The technique, format and sizes of the two pieces were identical. Dabir showed calligraphy and Talat utilized portions of old houses and distinct architecture of Lahore to construct her piece but, at a deeper level, both revealed their fascination with the tradition, and the themes and motifs from the past.

Another important entry in the faculty show was the painting by Iqbal Hussain. He drew himself standing with Rembrandt and Delacroix. The idea to place himself in the middle of two great painters from Europe appeared as the form of paying homage to them, or a statement to continue working in their style (if not the concept of equating himself with these two masters of world renown.

The loosely painted surface remains Iqbal Hussain’s talent as a natural painter, as well as his grasp over concocting interesting compositions. In addition to that, this work denoted a change in Hussain’s approach and belief, because earlier on he despised the practice of using photographic material as a reference and preferred painting from live models.

Muhammad Asif, head of the Fine Arts department showed a small still life, depicting an earthen jar and four apples. In its construction and the method of painting, one could trace the influences of Picasso, but Asif tried to infuse his own content by placing these objects in such a fashion that the arrangement resembled the female body betraying a basic elementary view of painting still lifes.

A similar attitude was observed in the triptych made by R.M. Naeem. It dealt with the current political situation with reference to three countries, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the US, along with three personalities, Musharraf, Bin Laden and Bush. The names of these states and characters were made into stamps and were printed innumerably on the three papers. Apart from that, tea cups were drawn in the middle of the world map and the three portraits, the text and the title Let’s Talk About Politics, alluded to the present condition. The inclusion of a female figure — typical from his other canvases — betrayed his frame of mind: of adapting the subject, instead of adopting it.

This way of ‘using’ a serious subject was replicated in the manner tradition was approached in the works of many faculty members. It was observed that most architects were occupied with the re-usage of heritage in modern structures. That concern resulted in the overt application of arches, niches, blue tiles and red bricks in their designed buildings — examples of which hung in the gallery.

Only a few of the faculty members consciously tried to reinvent the tradition, and respect the constraints, demands and aesthetics of their own time. The issue of tradition was not specific to the architects only, as it was visible in the works by other tutors also, mainly from the departments of miniature and textile design.

Interestingly, the senior faculty from both departments, such as Khalid Hussain and Bashir Ahmed, tried to re-produce the traditional forms on a superficial level. Whereas young tutors from these departments, such as Iram Zia, Sania Samad, Usman Saeed and Imran Qureshi, picked elements from the older art forms in order to construct pieces, which have contemporary sensibility and a strong personal expression.

Iram Zia, for instance, combined various textile techniques, such as embroidery, fabric painting and stitching in her panels titled Scripture. These were based on the kufic letters and Islamic designs blended with marks of embroidery echoing the lines of pencil or crayon. Likewise, Sania replaced the faces from the old miniatures, and put the pictures of different females — her friends and other known women — in these miniatures, framed inside the cut-outs of long shirts in purple velvet. Similarly, Imran and Usman created loosely painted surfaces and present-day figures/forms in their small works on paper.

Close to these, a few items in the exhibition indicated the artists’ quests to present fresh ideas in new forms. The works of Sarwat Rana, Humaira Abid, Faisal Sajjad, Nadeem Bashir and Quddus Mirza, could be mentioned in this regard. Most of their pieces, even if they were not fully resolved, were the sign of their makers’ unique approaches.

The relief sculpture by Sarwat Rana was fabricated on the idea of enlarging an ordinary object, thus transforming into ‘art’. It was noticed that the picture of her piece — in a nicely designed catalogue — appeared much better than the experience of seeing the actual work. Six wooden eggs by Humaira Abid portrayed the artist’ s concern to create an individual vocabulary. Mixed-media painting by Quddus Mirza unfolded his desire to be different, yet the work betrayed his cleverness with the technique and predictability at the same time.

In comparison to these, the small installation of Nadeem Bashir, with four toy soldiers rotating on separate bases, signified his choice of a readymade imagery and its apt implication in the present situation.

Likewise, Faisal Sajjad created a mixed-media/computer-generated print, in which the pictures of various paintings were assembled. In this ‘combine’ famous characters from the works of art were replaced. Hence one found the figure of Christ from Leonardo’s Last Supper in front of Van Gogh’s The Night Cafe. Similarly, the screaming figure from Edvard Munch’s famous painting was put in the middle of other works. In the same fashion the nude woman from Luncheon on the Grass by Monet was cut and moved on top of other works. This shift in the recognizable imagery stirred our habits of viewing artworks in that conditioned and firm scheme, by which we are accustomed to look at the nature and people.

Perhaps the director of the gallery, too, contributed in challenging the established notions. And that by hanging two paintings of Sadequain in Scope X when the exhibition was restricted to the persons teaching at the NCA. There may be numerous reasons for adding Sadequain to the show, but for an outsider it appeared that the gallerywallahs are not aware of the fact that Sadequain never taught at the NCA.

The only other, logical, explanation for this extraordinary inclusion could be that the two water-based paintings attributed to Sadequain may have been reproduced by a faculty member from NCA, who probably couldn’t resist to join several others busy in forging his work to satisfy the art market’s demand for ‘fake art’, as it is now called even by the uninitiated buyer.