KARACHI: It’s been three decades since the Indus Valley School (IVS) of Art and Architecture was founded. It has, in that period, established itself as one of the leading institutions of the country. A measure of its success are the top-drawer individuals, especially in the realm of art, that have graduated from IVS and are now serving society in their respective fields. It is in this connection that the IVS alumni show titled The Long and Short of It which concluded on Friday assumes significance.

The exhibition “celebrates the journey of 25 graduating batches”, and while doing so, the men and women whose works it has chosen to put on display could be called (because most of them are fairly well known now) achievers, the crème de la crème of the institution. They include individuals from the department of fine art to communication design to architecture etc. There are more than a dozen of them from different graduating years, which makes the show all the more exciting for it lends a distinct eclectic touch to the arrangement. It is hard (and unjust) to comment on the artworks put up by each one of them, therefore a summarised version of their collective effort might suffice.

‘The long and short of it’ basically refers to the artists’ take on their journeys as creative people, and in the process the experiences that they have had by interacting with their fellow beings. The phrase that the curators — Emaan Rana, Halima Sadia, Humayun Memon, Numair Abbasi and Shazaib Arif Shaikh — have used to explain this idea is ‘human temperament’. Anyone who even has a modicum of interest in art and design would know that this is one topic that never fails to attract artists’ attention. As a result, the artworks that the viewer sees in the show present a sparkling array of creative energies, all defining, deconstructing or decoding human behaviour and how it manifests in spaces and time zones that shape it.

The participating artists are: Nabahat Lotia, Jovita Alvares, Rubab Paracha, Noreen Ali, Fahad Naveed, Asim Ameen, Wajeeha Abbasi, Sharmeen Peshimam, Moyena Niazi, Razin Rubin, Marvi Mazhar, Sadia Salim, Lubaina Rajbhoy, Cyra Ali, Samya Arif, Sana Nasir and Babar Sheikh.

Published in Dawn, August 17th, 2019