The youth within any discipline defines its tastes and trends, and gives us an idea as to what will shape the future. Harnessing this fact, last year artist Adeel uz Zafar conceived Microcosm to present a survey of contemporary art — a kind of a sampler of the artistic youth and the diversity of ideas and mediums that they experiment with. Microcosm 2 is the second iteration of this undertaking and brings together 16 artists under the age of 40. It is a subjective embodiment of the current (and future) artistic milieu of the country.

While each artist creates their own microcosm of experiences, there are certain themes that emerge and recur in a few of the works. Madiha Hyder and Batool Zehra both deal with the idea of impermanence and mortality. Hyder’s work is aimed at personal themes — specifically her cats — and the stop motion animation composed of multiple drawings, erased and redrawn on a single surface, presents the lifespan of a cat compressed into a few seconds. The ticking of a clock speeding up alarmingly adds to the despondency of the piece, and the accompanying canvas with faded ghosts of a drawing leaves the viewer to contemplate their own eventual fate to become a lingering memory.

Zehra’s work treats medium as message, using ash collected from various burnt objects to create her works. Each object creates a distinct shade and texture of ash which allows for a dynamic visual. The remains of these unnamed objects are reborn in her work. Yet, in her performance/installation piece, even that is transient, submitted to disruption and erasure with each passing audience member.

Sixteen upcoming artists under 40 define the present and future of Pakistani art

This emphasis on materiality is shared by Rabia Khan and Masood Subhani, where narrative is driven by medium, rather than the other way around. Khan’s works employ a deceptive mechanism where interventions within the space are not exactly what they appear to be. The heavy chain is composed of foam and plastic, a façade which ironically prevents deeper investigation of the broken and abandoned wall, serving to preserve the illusion.

Subhani, on the other hand, collects traces of natural processes, transferring them from one surface to another and observing the transformations they may go through. The large panel shows rust lifted from a sheet of metal, creating interesting textures, depths and hues.

Suleman Faisal and Numair A. Abbasi converse and explore themes of a personal nature. Faisal’s mechanical sculpture is an exercise in introspection, creating the image of beating one’s own head on the wall; except, the hammer beats at its own reflection, pointing the frustration inward. The endless repetition renders the act meaningless, with no achievement or end result — only a racket which also eventually fades into white noise.

Abbasi explores the idea of vulnerability through an interactive installation piece where he invites the audience to step into his ‘personal space’, remove an article from their person and take a photograph within the setup that they can choose to take home. This rather bold experiment brings various ideas to the fore, pushing comfort zones both on the part of the artist and the audience, especially when the instant print reveals the artist himself in a compromising position layered on top of the image.

However, this can easily be read as an imposition on an unassuming audience within a situation that was initially controlled and consented. The audience chooses how much they reveal (or don’t), but then the artist takes away that agency while at the same time putting himself in a vulnerable state all in one single act. This push and pull between vulnerability and control, blurred personal boundaries and testing the gendered nature of comfort zones, is where the strength of this piece lies. The unpredictability of the endless possible outcomes with each individual further opens up the work to deeper and broader explorations.

This kind of experimentation with medium and artform not only defines this survey, but seems to be at par with the course of the art world as a whole, with novel and progressive ideas daringly and incessantly poking at the boundaries of art-making.

“Microcosm 2” is on display at the AAN Gandhara Art-Space from May 14 till June 19, 2018

Published in Dawn, EOS, May 27th, 2018