KARACHI: Can ideas of almost two-dozen artists converge? The answer to the question is not easy to ascertain. They can if those who are taking part in an exercise whose results are meant to be displayed under one roof come from the same ideological background. And that is pretty difficult to achieve.

However, ideas can come together or meet at a point where they appear to have emerged from the same creative wavelength. It simply means that the quality of works put on view on a single platform does not fluctuate. This is the feeling one gets visiting a group exhibition titled Convergence II,which is under way at the Full Circle Gallery.

Now to wavelength bit of the show. There is a scintillating variety of subjects picked by the participating artists to express themselves. The reason one is using the adjective ‘scintillating’ is that looking at the artworks both excite and invite the viewer to ponder the issues raised or the stories told through them.

The range of topics isn’t remarkable for the large number of participants; but because it tries to highlight subjects related to the inner conflicts of mortal souls as well as the outer bricks-and-mortar world that they exist in. So if on the one hand, there is a painting depicting the changes that take place within a person due to psychological traumas, on the other hand there are drawings of buildings in a city whose colonial legacies live on despite the deformities witnessed in the physical shape of the city. Isn’t that fascinating!

The exhibition concludes on April 21.

The artists taking part in it are: Amber Anwar, Asif Kasi, Ayesha Shariff, Ayesha Siddiqui, Azhar ul Haq Khan, Farah Yusuf Ali, Farooque Ali, Isra Noman, Kashif Ahmed, M Abdul, Mahrukh Bajwa, Mahnoor Tariq, Maaz Jaan, Ozair Bin Mansoor, Paul Mehdi Rizvi, Sadia Rathore, Sameeta Ahmed, Sehr Yaqoob, Shahzad Zar, Shiza Naeem and Syed Jeem.

Published in Dawn, April 4th, 2023