KARACHI: They say history is told from the perspective of the powerful. A debate has been raging for a long time about how we, in Pakistan, are taught history and to what degree it is indisputable. It’s a legitimate debate.

The artist community sees the growth (read: evolution) of mankind not necessarily with reference to the way historical facts are narrated to us. The title of an exhibition of Nizakat Ali Depar’s latest body of work at the Canvas Art Gallery is ‘Narration and Imagination’. It is obvious that the artist is making a distinction between what’s told and what’s imagined. The latter cannot always be a result of a flight of fancy but rooted in traditions that artists themselves seem find difficult to detach from.

‘Kushti’ (gouache on wasli) is the right exhibit to begin the show with. Why? Because the two elephants on an ostensible collision course immediately transport the viewer to our collective past. However, it doesn’t feel as if the past is done and dusted. It’s there, very much so.

The artist introduces another confrontational scene in the next piece with equal intensity but elevates the show to a striking level with ‘Lion in Conversation with Dog’ (gouache and pencil on wasli). Using the silhouetted figure of the dog, Depar highlights the canine’s bestiality more than the lion’s. Even without being part of the theme of narration and imagination, the exhibit can hold on its own.

Then there are two other major strands in the exhibition: one relates to thorns and the other to the map series. The slight difference between the two is that while the thorn series can also be construed in personal and physical terms, the map paintings revert the viewer to those historical facets of our society which we see and don’t like to look at.

The show will run till Oct 12.

Published in Dawn, October 5th, 2014