Tucked away at an idyllic farm near Islamabad’s famous Sunday Bazaar is the quaint Dastaangoi Gallery. It’s a little out of the way, but well worth the visit for their latest showing, ‘In Transit’. Showcasing the works of artists Hamza Bin Faisal and Sabir Abro, the exhibition takes us on a journey into the ephemeral, explored through the light and structure of the bricks and mortar that surround our everyday.

Faisal demonstrates a real mastery over line and form with his opaque watercolour series. From a distance, one might think that the transitory theme is being explored using found materials. It appears as though these paintings have been made on discarded packing boxes — torn, crumpled and with packing tape clearly visible. But closer inspection shows a wry sense of humour shining through and the excellence of the execution is redoubled — all that we think is ‘found’ is a laboriously-created illusion. Carefully cut and creased wasli paper is our medium, not a piece of packing tape in sight, except for the appearance of it.

To find our theme, we have to look instead to the faded facades and crumbling exteriors of Faisal’s buildings. They remind us that while we build using stone, concrete, bricks and steel, all fades in the end. Each building is shuttered — we’re not invited inside, instead left to wonder at the stories the buildings are witness to.

What joys, what sorrows do these dwellings conceal? They are silent observers of the passage of time and the myriad inhabitants that all leave their mark on these structures. His installation piece, At Close Quarters, mirrors this theme while exploring the net of a cube with tidy little buildings printed on the outside — but it all ultimately leaves us wondering more about what fills the space within.

Two distinct yet harmonious artistic voices delve into the fleeting nature of urban landscapes

Abro’s Between the Bricks series uses light to investigate the transitory nature of our world. Grounded in an exploration of structure, Abro’s layering of paint gives the feeling that there’s a whole other world just below the surface, if we dare to scratch it. Across the body of work, hard angles and brutalist structures are rendered soft through light. In Between the Bricks I, scaffolding and a billowing green cloth diffuses the clear lines of a minaret, bleeding it into the gentle blue-grey sky.

In other works, the cityscapes that go on and on into the horizon are bathed in tender light — the clamour of humanity silenced by a blanket of subdued blues, or illuminated by the eerie grey-green light that precedes a storm. Thousands lie cocooned in their own little worlds, stretching unseen into the distance.

Each building is a hub of life and the nexus of an epic tale untold. But, taken en masse, we can either be overwhelmed by the jumble of the city and all the lives it represents, or we can smile at the transitory nature of it all.

We are, at the end of the day, just here to spend a little time between the bricks.

‘In Transit’ is on display at Dastaangoi Gallery, Islamabad from February 22-March 25, 2024

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

Published in Dawn, EOS, March 23rd, 2025