November 6, 2004

The palpable reality of terrorism is unbearably real in countries like ours scarred by a grizzly trail of subversive activities. As government agencies worldwide launch a global crackdown on terrorist activities, efforts to grapple with the threat at a people’s level are also on the rise. Within the art fraternity, this war is being waged through the emotive power of the visual image.

A most recent expression of fears and concerns on the subject were widely manifest in an exhibition held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Tokyo, Japan. Titled “Terrorism cannot be exterminated by war”, this show was organized by the Japan Afro-Asian Latin American Artists Association. Launched in 1971, JALLA is a platform of artists who share common goals of developing a solidarity movement within artist’s communities of Afro-Asia and Latin America, to combat worldwide crises that threaten peaceful existence.

The current show was the fourteenth JALLA exhibition and this time it included three artists from Pakistan. Young and upcoming their work was characterized by a fresh vocabulary and novel use of symbols to highlight their areas of conflict.

Fauzia A. Minallah, an Islamabad-based artist exhibits the sensibility of a mother fearful about the future of her children in a world increasingly threatened by aggression. “My paintings are windows to my soul,” she claims. This statement can be translated literally also as her visual imagery centres on large areas of murky shadows illuminated by panels of glowing light, much like light flooding through a door or window in a darkened room.

She carves out these areas from within the wooden painting boards to create a 3-D effect and then paints them in whites and yellows. Establishing her concept of light and dark, or life and death, the artist stages her main performance in the luminous spaces. Her themes centre around home, family and togetherness, with allusive references to politics and the world situation.

In “Pakistan India and Baby Kashmir” the message is direct and simply put through two human figures mounted on the nukes, precariously balancing a baby (Kashmir). The swirling dotted marks tattooed on the wood animate the work with evocative rhythms suggestive of turmoil and chaos. The decorative engraved panels refer to the shared heritage the two countries enjoy.

Minallah adopts a soft edged humane stance to counter terrorism. Mixed media effects of brushwork, carving, engraving and tattooing are peculiar to her work. She derives inspiration from ancient Gandhara carvings as well as slate engravings or chitarkari found on slate tombs in the cemeteries of her home town in the Gangar mountain region of the NWFP. An MSc in communication design from the Pratt Institute, New York, Minallah remains busy not just as an artist but also as a graphic designer, cartoonist, writer for children and runs her own institute called Funkor Child Art Centre.

Artist Mohammed Zeeshan adopts a bolder, more confrontational approach to terrorism. A recent graduate of the NCA, he is an exponent of the contemporary miniature genre. His message is conceived around two main motifs — the gun symbol as life threatening and the banana image as life giving. He equates the luscious fruit with nature’s bounty, a nourishing agent which he terms “soft, pure and untouched” — whereas the gun, hard and metallic in contrast is a manmade element of destruction.

The installation of a gun in the heart of a banana peel symbolizes a flagrant violation of the inherent purity of nature, corruption of innocent minds and, on a direct level, a juxtaposition of goodness versus evil. The use of Arabic calligraphy alludes to divine invocations used profusely to influence impressionable minds. Zeeshan’s flourishing text is as ambiguous as the hyperbolic sloganeering used by militant clerics to attract young men to their creed.

Another miniature artist who speaks through obvious symbols is Tazeen Qayum. Selecting the creepy-crawly cockroach as her emblem, she makes a point by inverting her imagery. In “Lure and Kill” she nullifies the grossness of the cockroach by using it as a decorative motif for a repeat pattern. These repeated images of a dead insect symbolize systematic decimation of human life by subversive agencies. Other images like “Keep Out of [the] Reach of Children” and “Test on [a] Small Area” also show the eradication of a cockroach by pesticide sprays. Both are oblique references to the diminishing value of human life.

A contemporary miniature painter, Tazeen Qayum is a 1996 graduate of the NCA. She has two solos and considerable group participations to her credit. Her work has been selected for two international Biennials held in Iran and Bangladesh and she was awarded a Unesco bursary in 2000 to work and exhibit in Vienna. She now lives in Toronto and works as coordinator for South Asian Visual Arts Collective (SAVAC).

All the three artists produced works relevant to the theme. While Minallah was somewhat subjective, the other two approached it objectively. However, the imagery was not charged with heart-wrenching, emotive content as can be possible with such a topic.

Since its inception, JALLA has been organizing international exchange exhibitions every other year at the Metropolitan Museum in Tokyo. The catalogue of the current event revealed a diverse array of artworks from different countries, articulating protest, destruction, utopia, deprivation and other questioning stances supporting the right to peaceful existence. Even though we are becoming increasingly desensitized, such non-violent, awareness-building projects do help in making us realize how important peace and harmony are to life.