ISLAMABAD: In a huge exhibit spanning three display areas, the Annual Degree Show of the National College of Arts (NCA) Rawalpindi represents the culmination of the art school experience for more than a dozen students and a glimpse into the emerging talent.

Visitors to the National Art Gallery got to see the person and the process behind all of the creativity. Several students explained the thought processes and invited honest feedback.

In this Annual Degree Show on Tuesday, each undergraduate student has demonstrated his or her readiness to enter the professional art world upon graduation.

For example, Shireen Rasul’s work is an exploration of the deep sea world where humans transform into these fictitious forms to adapt to their new habitat, glowing and almost alien like.

“It’s a world that possibly is unexplored where the human is not the superior being and his parameters are not the only measure of the world; every living being is an intelligent centre that relates itself to the reality in a different way,” said Shireen Rasul who created her own habitat where humans could not sustain for a single day independently and would have to evolve to survive by taking forms of non-human beings and transforming into higher intelligence.

Javaria Salar Khan’s ‘Acid House’ was equally attractive where she craves the wild and untamed and attempts to reach into the deepest recesses of the brain. Her work seemed psychedelic and hallucinating.

This gifted group of artists includes over a dozen students. They had finished their works in popular genres such as miniature, painting, print making and sculptures.

Guests included mostly students from the NCA. Second year art student Aqsa Mehboob described the exhibition as realisation of self.

Other visitors to the show like Seema Mangi and Kiran Javed appreciated the concepts behind the paintings and installations.

Alina Akbar’s visual concerns were related to the invasion of space by the machinery around us. “My personal observation and the experience connect to how the natural aspect is given a passive position and the mechanical elements are ruling the human instinct,” said the miniature painter whose images are mostly characters evolving from machines in use.

While Osama bin Shahab reflected on how dark experiences in our lives and the experiences we share are interrelated to the struggle or the choices that people get face or feel in life, Nageen Ahmed Khan depicts the unfulfilled void of a child trying desperately to keep on an exuberant façade while there’s nothing but barrenness underneath.

The show is a blend of arts and design and visitors appreciated the intent to blur disciplines.

Published in Dawn, May 27th, 2015

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