KARACHI: There’s a remarkable line in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “The course of true love never did run smooth.” The depth of meaning in the straightforwardness of the message is astounding. We all know that to love someone or something cannot be without pain and pitfalls. And yet, we want to experience that.

A-two person show titled For the Love of Life that can be seen at the Canvas Art Gallery adds an extra significant element to the idea, which is, to love life. Now what is life without love? But then having a trouble-free existence, with or without loving anything, is almost impossible. This makes the concepts of comfort and freedom in such a framework even more intriguing, and the exhibition worth visiting.

The two talented artists — Amna Rahman and Kiran Saleem — whose paintings are on view intelligently present the personal and the historical (the latter not in the collective sense but with an individual’s history in mind) through their creative efforts for the solitary reason: to explore the unexplored.

The series that Kiran has come up with is named ‘History is not her-story’ (oil and acrylic on canvas). There’s unmistakable sensitivity to her art, and looking at what she’s focusing on and what she’s leaving to the viewer’s imagination, gives a sense that at the heart of the subject matter of her artworks is the issue of unfinished business that most of us try to come to terms with in our lives. And the artist conveys that message strongly.

Amna homes in on human interactions and puts them against recreational backdrops calling them ‘Dreams of Aquatic Realms’ and ‘Mystical Realm’ (oil on canvas) — because they talk of wants and needs, fulfilled or unfulfilled. Doing so, she compels the viewer to look at her protagonists closely so that what’s happening in the rest of the frame doesn’t eclipse the foreground. Consequently, the artworks produced are super engaging.

The exhibition curated by Quddus Mirza concludes tomorrow.

Published in Dawn, June 29th, 2022