To be able to look at art is a privilege, for it requires having functional eyesight that some of us are not equipped with. The formal analysis, which is one of the first steps in thinking, observing or writing about art, begins with the prudent use of sight that lets us visualise and describe.

Naturally, art critics have emphasised on developing a keen eye that initiates looking and observing formal details and brings our attention to the visual scope that an artwork can offer us. But imagine if you were to not look but also be able to physically feel an artwork.

Contemporary visual artist Hamid Hanbhi invites you to now touch artworks, thus allowing to analyse and characterise art with a sense other than sight.

In his recent show at Karachi’s Canvas Gallery, titled Out of Sight, Hanbhi turns braille into art. Braille is an interactive and physical system of touching raised dots, representing letters and numbers, on a surface that lets a user read with the hand without employing sight. The artist exhibits diptychs that consist of paintings and drawings in oil paint and graphite respectively, while representing them in creamy white and textured braille sheets as well.

Hanbhi also presents a series of 150 installations that represent walking canes often used by the visually compromised. These sticks are fashioned out of kohl or surma, which is traditional eyeliner and a substance believed to promote clarity of vision. With material that speaks for the art itself, and works that necessitate seeing and touching, the artist brings our interest to sightlessness and the notion of less explored interaction with textures in the gallery space.

In his painting ‘Aasman’, the artist fills the canvas with a melancholic cloudy sky, dominated with grey hues. Amidst this sombre background, Hanbhi visualises eight flying birds that occupy the middle half and the right of the canvas. A braille representation accompanies the painting that lets the viewer touch and sense the painted scenery. More paintings depict a similar approach.

Hamid Hanbhi alters how we ‘see’ art by introducing works that are meant to be touched as well

In the solemn ‘Samandar’, he uses graphite on archival paper to expose a part of the sea with very low waves. The artist makes excellent use of atmospheric and aerial perspective, as the water recedes into space and fuses seamlessly with the horizon and into the sky.

Hanbhi, who was born in Jacobabad, also includes sensitively handled paintings of his city’s landscapes. Most of the artist’s palette of greys is quite moody, hovering somewhere in between a scale that maintains serenity and unpredictability on its opposite ends.

The artist also incorporates a lively portrait of Muhammad Ali Jinnah. This portrait of the Quaid-i-Azam, who is featured in a crisp ash white suit and looking directly in your eyes while smoking a cigar, is the statement piece in Hanbhi’s works. In ‘Jinnah’, an oil painting, the Quaid is represented as the ultimate power figure, who stands unabashed in a vibrant and vigorous manner that we have always associated him with.

Inserting a powerful portrait of a national leader with an accompanying braille work among dark sceneries is not out of context. Instead, it fuels Hanbhi’s thought process, that wishes to redefine perception for us. Now you may not only view the Quaid, but also touch the braille to feel his powerful presence as a ray of light amidst the glorious gloom that has set in with the paintings and drawings of the moody skies, sea and land.

Hanbhi is a graduate of the National College of Arts and works from his studio in Lahore. The show is a culmination of Vasl’s KKAF Research Grant (2019-20). With Out of Sight, Hanbhi gives you a choice: you may wish to ‘see’ art or not this time, while redefining it for the critics as well, who may have to rethink about relying solely on sight to critically ruminate over art.

“Out of Sight” was exhibited at Canvas gallery in Karachi from October 6 to October 15

Published in Dawn, EOS, Octoberr 25th, 2020