ISLAMABAD: A joint exhibition by two artists, titled Moving Forward; Reflection of the Soul, opened on Sunday.

Samreen Asif and Salma Manzoor, who are faculty members at Comsats University, have 34 works on display at the Nomad Art Gallery.

Some of the works such as Paradise, the Saffar series, Nostalgia, Springtime, Landscape and the Come Fly with Me series are made with herbal and water colours and acrylics on wasli by Samreen Asif and the Barcode series, Days We Talk Less, and Fusion by CPEC done in water colour on paper, are a mix of modern and classic miniature and are outstanding.

“The two artists have managed the space and flow very skilfully,” commented Ahmed Habib, an established artist in his own right.

“Managing empty spaces is a very challenging job for an artist, but the works of the two artists show their confidence and art of playing with colour with ease and perfection,” he complimented.

“It is a meaningful and thought-provoking exhibition of paintings of the two women artists,” Nomad director Nageen Hyat, who also curated the exhibition, said.

Both come together on a striking collaborative piece, Amalgam, a subtle expression of the movement of energy and emotion, done in herbal and water colours and acrylics on wasli, while maintaining their individuality, Ms Hyat said.

“The exhibition is the result of an in-depth discussion I had with Samreen and Salma, aiming to push them out of their comfort zones and share emotions and personal experiences more freely through their art,” she commented.

Ms Asif’s symbolic focus on barcodes reflects her feelings about the values and criteria of an outsider while travelling and spending life abroad.

An assistant professor of fine arts, she learned composition and colour balance by studying and specialising in Indian miniature painting and techniques.

“What modern artists are seeking seemed to be already present in these paintings from long ago; I take inspiration from the colours and rich mythologies of the Indian Subcontinent,” she commented.

Samreen uses the medium of herbal colours, watercolours and acrylics on a handmade traditional sheet of wasli sheets and canvases.

“I thought of creating a novel style of my own, portraying various schools such as Kangra, Pahari, Persian, Chinese and Japanese,” she said.

Her earlier figurative work focuses on South Asian women, subtly depicting social injustices, discrimination and changes in collective psyche and behaviour of society towards women.

About the shift in her work, she said: “Moving to China to explore me and a rich culture has had a great impact on my work.” This current exhibition is also about my experience in China and other countries, she says.

Explaining the ‘barcode’ theme, she said: “Alan Haberman wanted grocery stores to embrace the 12-digit universal product code, better known as the barcode, to create a standardised system for tracking inventory and speeding checkout , a change that over the past half a century has come to mean so much more.

“Barcodes define eligibility to excess opportunities and this is what I experienced in six years in China and in other countries I travelled to,” she said.

“We have set scanning criteria for personalities, habits, intellect and list goes on. Human to human interaction, human to nature interaction is becoming lesser day by day.” The exhibition will continue till June 12 from 11am to 7pm every day except for Fridays.

Published in Dawn, May 28th, 2018