RAWALPINDI: The work of students from the National College of Arts (NCA) Rawalpindi fine arts, design and architecture bachelors programmes was displayed on Sunday as part of its 2018-19 thesis show.

The work of 93 students was exhibited at the event, which was inaugurated by Minister of Kashmir Affairs and Gilgit-Baltistan Ali Amin Khan Gandapur.

The exhibition, which will remain open until Jan 23, features the work of 28 students from the NCA’s Department of Fine Arts, 24 students from the Department of Design and 41 students from the Department of Architecture.

Some of the highlights of the exhibition included works by students from the design department.

‘MFG: 18.11.1994 - EXP: 18.11.2024’, an interactive design project by Sharmeen Feroze highlights the concept of the ‘shelf-life’ of women, while Maham Fareed’s project ‘Brown’, proposes eco-friendly packaging by exploring alternatives of paper, helping to prevent deforestation, and Abeer Rehan took an initiative to design the assistive application ‘Ello’, for the hearing impaired to help people communicate through pictorial representations.

‘Ferric Pathway’ is an installed interactive display by Nemal Zafar depicting nature and its processes, mainly metal rusting. ‘Pash Dani’ by Anita Shamsher is a range of clothing reusing sheep wool, translating musical instruments and the land of Hunza in her designs.

The works on display by the Department of Architecture promoted cultural diversity, the integration of various disciplines of visual arts, experimentation of traditional arts and crafts with modern technologies and augmenting artistic designing and analytical skills.

The Fine Arts exhibition featured an array of mediums and artistic approaches in miniature, painting, printmaking and sculpture.

In their works, students have explored personal and contextual ideas in a variety of forms, mediums and content.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr Gandapur praised the work of the students and said the young generation is talented and their talents would be used for development.

He said that the government was striving to provide better opportunities to young people and has made many plans in this regard.

NCA Principal Prof Dr Murtaza Jafri said: “As always, the Rawalpindi campus has produced an overwhelming quality of work.”

“Having viewed the process in many stages while the work was being produced, the thesis work is very interesting. Besides investigating formal concerns, the work contextualises opinions, personal queries and beliefs, social practices, gender politics and everything within and around the experiences of these students who have boldly presented their viewed in the degree show,” he said.

Published in Dawn, January 14th, 2019