We all know Neverland as a place of eternal youth, where nothing bad happens and everything is joyous. But scratch the surface of this ideal and you find a deep schism between Peter Pan’s wish to never grow up and the inexorable march of time — as with each ‘tick’ of the clock, the cowardly Captain Hook shivers in fear.

O Art Space’s latest exhibition, ‘Neverland’, featuring Ayesha Shariff and Scheherazade Junejo, has well and truly scratched this surface. Both these Karachi-based artists and graduates of Lahore’s prestigious National College of Arts (NCA) present their interpretations of Neverland in a show filled with vibrant colour, monochromatic drama and technical brilliance.

Shariff’s exploration of the theme explodes in pink and blood-red hues, with the pomegranate as the central motif. “Of late, I have been craving red,” muses Shariff. “An unusual craving…that found expression in a subject both profound and powerful.”

As a fruit of heaven, the pomegranate can represent a chance to taste Neverland, momentarily. Shariff is documenting her aspiration towards the celestial, all while mired in the mundane: “To me,” she says, “it is an invitation to spiritual splendour.” Her choice of colours connects us with the visceral world of blood and flesh, which must be transcended to reach the heavenly pomegranate; she hints at the pain of this process, with the sharpness of a gold sword in The Last Drop and the Gold Sword.

Vibrant hues contrast with monochromatic tones in an intriguing two-person show in Lahore

Shariff explores the fleeting nature of this world in the Burnout series of paintings, where the fertile colours we see in the This Planet is My Pomegranate series are soured to tones of burnt sienna, and we are confronted with the difference between the heavenly and earthly fruits: the once defined and juicy pomegranate is bleeding at the edges, and soon it will fade away.

Just as Shariff is peeling back the layers of herself through her imagery, Junejo is tearing at layers of a different kind. In contrast to Shariff’s passionate colours and free-form backgrounds, Junejo has harnessed her emotions into a highly stylised and technical body of work.

We’re reminded that the trappings of this world, the monotonous and repetitive, need to be pried apart to view the vibrant, full heart. Is Junejo warning us in Dawn? If we’re not quick, our hearts will soon be out of reach, like a balloon that has escaped from the hand of a child, floating beyond reach.

She subsequently tears at the layers in Noon, Dusk and Midnight, but we never find the same vibrant heart that floated away from us in Dawn. Rather, we expose the fabric of ourselves in the process.

Junejo says she experimented and improvised on her canvases, with the journey taking precedence over the destination: “This resulted in many twists and turns during production,” she explains, “requiring heavy reworking on every canvas.”

She renders striking blue and red cloth in the traditional medium of oil paint, which juxtaposes with the unconventional use of spray paint to create layers and stencil hearts. Here, the medium itself creates meaning — the paint of choice for the rebel, the youthful, ends up creating the layers that bury the very vibrancy that youth seeks out, just like those seeking Neverland desire.

Perhaps what these artists are saying is: “Be wary of Neverland!” True paradise is earned through trial, the cut of the golden sword, the prick of the thorn, the tearing of layers that blind us. We shouldn’t be afraid of the ticking clock, like Hook was in the tale. Instead, we should embrace the fruit that time grows and the hearts that it nurtures.

‘Neverland’ was on display at O Art Space, Lahore from July 26-August 5, 2024

The writer is an Australian based in Pakistan. She is an avid enthusiast of contemporary Pakistani art and culture

Published in Dawn, EOS, August 18th, 2024