Inside this new love, die. Your way begins on the other side, Become the sky. Die, and be quiet. The speechless full moon comes out now.” — Jelaluddin Rumi

Some artistic narratives, as if seeking the ‘speechless full moon’, touch the most intimate and unguarded areas of our being. So quiet and empty is the vastness that is created that one is drawn into it, as if seeking one’s own image in that moon or in the reflection of it.

Such is the hold of the visual language of Rahim Baloch’s imagery that one cannot but contemplate the secrets of the universe in it, just as the artist seems to be doing. A strong representation of Baloch’s paintings was recently on view at his solo show at Chawkandi Art Gallery. His first show in Karachi marked the artist’s entry into the mainstream, a show that makes a viewer rethink the magic that is contained in imagery, in seeking pleasure in the intensity of the artist’s process.

Rahim Baloch explores the simple bumble bee as a symbol of healing for the tragedy of human loss in poetic subtlety of the miniature

Trained in the miniature tradition at the National College of Arts, Lahore, Baloch has produced a convincing narrative of subtle, semi-abstract imagery that speaks of the personal, social and political contexts situated around him. The specificity of a cultural space is perhaps why his large scale ‘miniatures’ speak so eloquently of the larger context. The personal is also the collective, and as the artist builds his story around the bumblebee, the jasmine flower and the feather like pollen, he allows his viewer to meander with him into the largeness of an inner haven; a garden which is a dreamscape as well as a place where he buries his sorrows, a quietness where he dies, and is reborn through the subtlety of his line and form.

As a wreath hangs suspended against the sky of a moonlit night, light emanates from within the painting, perhaps like an inner secret, or a special place for kindred souls. And, as the artist pays tribute to the martyred students of the Peshawar massacre that happened not too long ago, he transforms the imagery of their shoes, decorating them with flowers. What is lyrical and sensual is simultaneously tragic and painful: the artist assumes the role of an assassin by putting bullet holes on this paper; he then initiates a process of healing, altering the perception of violence.

If the imagery is created by a conventional approach, it is also a gesture, where the human body which pulled the trigger has left its mark and pierced the hole. The presence of the body has been a pivotal anchor of Western modernism, and as such Baloch coexists with the modern and the traditional, between the figurative and the abstract. In another work, we are aware that the artist is lying on the ground to view the sky or the universe, in flight, as if looking for an escape from the pain of loss; he seeks an embrace with the universe. It is an artist seeking peace and comfort from nature.

The layers of meaning that are bestowed on the work will continue to reveal the concerns of the times and cultural context in which it is read and re-read. As a miniaturist, he recedes far into the past, and gains strength from the conversations that have happened.

The sense of the circular is constant, just as the artist, and with him, the viewer are performing a vird, or seeking refuge in the safety of the sacred. At the same time, the artist says that by painting the linear thread-like feather, one line at a time with a single squirrel hair, he is able to detach from the physicality of his immediate surroundings. He submits to the process, the figure in his painting rising to the heavens, existing in a space beyond words and image.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, January 17th, 2016