PESHAWAR: Young artist Pir Hamid Ali alias Kheshgi Khan believes that art is a strong medium of expression through which social and cultural ways of a nation can be preserved and also a peace narrative can be built the way people think and act in a particular landscape under prevailing geo-political conditions.

A resident of Kheshgi Payyan in Nowshera district, the artist has demanded of the government to set up a state-of-the art gallery in the province to preserve the art pieces of legendary artists. He says that works of many old and young artists never see light of the day because the metropolis has no art gallery.

Mr Khan maintains that many artists end up with stuffing their art works in their home stores owing to non-availability of an art gallery. “How can artists market their works and how will people know about the significance of the visual art,” he questions.

He says that people’s life must find true expression in contemporary means of arts. He says that art is a true mirror to real life of people as it never laughs when they cry.

He regrets nonexistence of an art gallery in the entire culturally rich Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. “The result is that the wonderful art works of our legendary artists find no exposure to inspire upcoming young artists. Today our people little know about Arbab Sardar, Imtiaz Hussain, Nasiruddin Momand, Jehanzeb Mailk and many others,” laments the artists.

He says that works of Saeed Akhtar, Sajid Khan, Kaleemullah and Sajid Ali also need exposure. “Our visual art stands totally paralysed and only performing art gets a vague authorities’ attention but our canvas should also be activated to create images borrowing characters from our social and cultural real life patterns,” he argues.

Mr Khan has held three solo exhibitions one each in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad and recently an art gallery called ‘Fabriano Aquarelle’ in Italy got one of his portraits selected for a popular art magazine.

He has completed an ambitious project for a London-based art firm on thematic miniatures. His pursuits are varied as his canvas — calligraphy, mosaic, photography, landscape, collage painting, truck art, music, acting and design patterns.

Mr Khan plans to conduct a solo exhibition abroad on culture of Pakhtunkhwa. He is the recipient of several awards including SS Hayder, Gulgee and Abasin Arts Council, Peshawar. The young artist has taught at Peshawar College of Arts, briefly but currently works with directorate of culture as media specialist.

Since his early childhood, he had a penchant for drawing human figures with pencil but his religiously inclined family remained a hurdle to bring out his inner artist.

When he was a 6th grader, class decoration competition had earned him teacher’s appreciation coupled a tacit permission from his family to go ahead with his artistic pursuits.

The poetic images of Ghani Khan are a great fascination for him. Also, he has drawn figures of Pakhtun personalities to celebrate their contributions.

Published in Dawn, July 19th, 2017