KARACHI: Apart from being the study of past events, history allows us to think about course correction. Since most artists prefer imagination to reason (read: heart to mind) when it comes to examining historical periods, they tend to look at things through a creative lens where ‘what-if’ take centre-stage and ‘what-happened’ takes a back seat.

This appears to be the idea of an exhibition of artworks by renowned artist Ahmed Ali Manganhar titled Taxila Revisited that’s under way at the Canvas Art Gallery.

Taxila is an ancient city in Punjab, one of those remarkable regions that tell us about our link to old civilisations and empires. History buffs often visit it. Manganhar seems to have a profound interest in the place, too.

He says, “My visit to Taxila began because I wanted to step outside of the studio and thought of finding a quiet place outdoors where I could make studies from nature… I visited the colonial museum and worked with photographs from British archives. But photographs are staged and dead pictures did not work for me. So I worked them out of time and set them in the landscape of wintry Taxila, the deliberations of British archaeologists being addressed by Alexander on his charging horse, among monks and statues from other times. To me, history painting is not about facts, ideas or even interpretation. It could be about many images that historians of power have left behind.”

Some key takeaways from the artist’s assertion are the images left behind, wintry Taxila and Alexander. It is evident that he is revisiting an epoch by re-visualising it. The visual and the tactile are evoked beautifully in his paintings with a distinction that while going back in time he is also trying to look at things not through a historian’s lens but with a collective perspective which could come either from people of the days gone by or the present.

‘Greek Myth: Narcissus’ (acrylic on canvas) is an impressive case in point. Another striking example is the series ‘Alexandrian Dreams’. These dreams do not give off a power vibe. Rather they speak of the kind of individuality that is steeped in the collective progress of a civilisation.

The exhibition concludes on Thursday (tomorrow).

Published in Dawn, July 13th, 2022