ISLAMABAD, April 24: When everyone else finds attraction in truck arts, Karachi-based Mohan Das is drawn to creativity on the rickshaws.

‘Past My Love’ is the title of my exhibition based on rickshaw art. Rickshaw was introduced in Pakistan during President Ayub Khan’s reign in 1961. It was brought from Italy for the purpose of cleaning but the drivers began to use it for transport,” said the painter at an exhibition that opened at Khaas Gallery on Tuesday.

Mohan Das explained how they started decorating the rickshaw and named it ‘Italy ki Shehzadi’ (princess of Italy). He also compared the lifeless vehicle with Mona Lisa.

“But the rickshaw driver discovers life in it. For instance, he treats the accelerator as if it was the fragile hands of the princess and beautifies it with colourful plastic. He treats the wheel mudguard as the anklet of the princess and gets it decorated in various designs,” he explained.

Hence, this was reflected in his paintings in which Mona Lisa is disguised and merged with a rickshaw itself and also dressed in the local Pakistani outfit. Her heart was a combination of itself and the Chinese engine.

One of his paintings also showed how technology had rendered painters unemployed after computerised designs just the same as Pena flex posters rendered the artists, who once painted cinema posters, useless.

The painters had always shown and taken interest in painting and creating various art pieces, including Quaid-i-Azam and Allama Iqbal.

Zahra Malkani’s works at the show deal with the framing and reframing of memories, literally in the form of the family photographs that graced the walls of people’s homes, and metaphorically in terms of how people constructed and reconstructed those memories in imaginations.

“Through this work, I explore how the past never fully translates into the present, and what is gained and lost in translation. I excavate and explore, construct and deconstruct memories, and put that process and its results on display for the viewer to see,” said Malkani, explaining the combination of sentimentality and a cold distance in her reconstruction of these images from her personal history.

Despite Malkani’s seemingly personal relationship with these photographs, she told her visitors at the gallery that she was as much at a loss as them in ‘knowing’ them. The exhibition will continue till May 5.