KARACHI: A four-person show titled A History of the Future opened at the Full Circle Gallery on Thursday.

It is evident from the works of the participating artists — Noureen Rasheed, Shiblee Muneer, Rubab Jawaid and Muhammad Sulaman — that they are interested in the history of our society whose effects have shaped our present and might go on to impinge on our future.

Muneer’s gouache-on-wasli artwork ‘Half Plate’ is probably the most thematically apt piece. The half that the viewer can see is readily understandable, much like one of the two cloven characters from a famous Italian tale. It is understandable because it represents our shared past, something that we’re all familiar with, even if we were never integral to it. It is the missing part of the plate, as it were, that indicates, in the present, an uncertain time to come. And haven’t we learned to live with uncertainty?

Rasheed takes the concept a step ahead by decorating her frame with a host of familiar images in unfamiliar settings. The images are taken from the world of nature, not necessarily benevolent. In ‘Capitalist Invasion’ (gouache and gold gilding on wasli) she underlines the myriad of (negative) forces that combine to cause an invasion. But then, with the bad comes the good, despite the fact that never the twain shall meet.

For Jawaid the phrase ‘medium is the message’ seems to hold true. In her statement she stresses her fondness for fabric and texture. There’s more to her work than that, though. ‘Landscape’ (gouache on wasli) is an exhibit that moves from the collective to the individual, and becomes the landscape of a single experience.

Sulaman explores the question of identity formed through attires. He is not perturbed by people’s sartorial sense; rather, it is their compulsions to conceal their selves in certain kinds of clothing that compels him to investigate their fixations.

The exhibition concludes on Sept 14.

Published in Dawn, August 25th, 2017