KARACHI: To observe is to perceive. Perceptions play a significant role in decision-making. But the difference between an artist and someone who is not artistically inclined is that the former stays away from passing judgment, and waits for the moment when experiences can be analysed in light of observation.

The artworks put up by two artists, Ayesha Jatoi and Momin Zafar, at the Koel Art Gallery in an exhibition that opened on Thursday, touch upon a few important subjects without being judgmental.

Jatoi’s show is called The Observer. Its charm largely lies in the media she employs to put her message across, pencil-on-paper and stamp-on-paper. This naturally means that the artist wants to keep things simple where the art of drawing lines and using letters takes centre-stage. But simple they are not. The issues that compel her to create (and comment) are complex. They primarily relate to human relationships and the situations that they’re formed in. The most potent example of it is the piece called ‘The Quarrel’ (stamp on paper). There are three phrases in bold black letters against a white backdrop. Sounds pretty uncomplicated! Again, it is not. The three phrases (the man, the quarrel, the woman) encompass a whole gamut of goings-on that one sees and hears on a pretty regular basis in society. And all of that stems from another phrase, ‘the observer’.

Zafar goes off on a tangent, in a nice way. His question ‘Sahil Kya Hai’ (what is shore?) is a loaded one; and he tries to seek answer(s) to it by virtue of digital prints. The question basically tries to explore urbanism, in the sense that the pristine nature of the sea that we used to romanticise (and seek solace from) in literature and art, is giving way to phenomena that don’t gel with it. It may not sound like a new query, but it is a significant one.

The exhibition concludes on Sept 4.

Published in Dawn, August 26th, 2017