KARACHI: The notion of power and its uses or abuses has dominated deb­ates in intellectual circles from the time man began to express himself through art. More recently, French philosopher Michel Fou­cault took the debate forward by saying that in our time power is wielded through disciplinary mea­ns. Artists have their own way of interpreting such notions. They often look for the individual streak in collective behaviour.

Mohsin Panjwani’s artworks, on display at Studio Seven in an exhibition titled Social Dialogue, try to explore the same theme.

Panjwani uses one symbol to put his message across: the elephant. Now, elephants primarily symbolise power and, in certain cultures, wisdom. The artist is, obviously, aware of it, and seems to be more concerned with the former, which is perhaps the reason that it is the bestiality of the species that he highlights in his work. The interesting thing is that despite focusing on a single subject, he raises the issue in societal terms by morphing the animal into different, relatable shapes. As a result, the viewer sees the animal locking horns, metaphorically spea­king, with other similar species and as that happens the human aspect of the tussle, as if a fist-fight is going on, comes to the fore.

The clearest giveaway, however, is the names that Panjwani has given to his artworks. They range from ‘King’ (charcoal and acrylic on canvas) to ‘Mohre’ and from ‘Hawas’ to ‘Tarbiyat’. So even if the images border on abstraction, their titles pull things back into the real world. And all these things (king, pawn, greed and training) signify either the lust for power or an act of escapism from the power game. Escaping it is not easy, though, because after all it’s the animal within us, just as the ones that we confront in society on a regular basis, which has the tendency to get drawn towards the matrix of power at the drop of a hat.

The show, curated by Jamal Ashiqain, will continue until April 7.

Published in Dawn, April 2nd, 2017