KARACHI: It is so reassuring to see a new breed of painters and sculptors coming up who, apart from striving for technical prowess, choose subjects for their artworks that are socially relevant and uninhibited with regard to their personal predicaments.

To gauge the veracity of this claim, even a fleeting visit to the Arts Council of Pakistan’s Ahmed Parvez Gallery would suffice where the three-day thesis display of the third and fourth-year fine art and textile design students of the council’s School of Visual and Performing Arts concluded on Friday.

Each piece was worth spending some time with. In all, works of 13 students were exhibited. The fine art students were: Faha Shabi, Taha Abbas, Zehra Ali, Asim Naqvi, Ramsha, Hafsa Ramzan, Areege Malik, Sundus Tariq, Jagdish Kumar and Yusra Khan; whereas Sani Zehra, Urwa Hasnayn and Maria represented the textile department.

Now let’s come to the topics. They range from the historicity of architecture to an individual’s placement in the modern world full of emotional and physical challenges. The young artists deal with them with a great deal of maturity. This maturity stems from their ability to understand, perhaps instinctively, that art has the power to communicate ideas and reach areas where thoughts aren’t always easily communicable. Add to this the intensity of the feeling that moves along with these thoughts without which no art can have meaning.

For example, one of the youngsters focuses on the ‘interplay between heritage and innovation’ using geometrical shapes as his medium to put across how he perceives the whole exercise in the contemporary context. Then another employs family history with an emotional connect through the art of sculpting. As a result, the viewer gets to see eye-catching fiber glass pieces. Mention must also be made of a series of painting in which a young female creative soul has used her sister as a model to come up with striking exhibits denoting psychological challenges.

Good stuff!

Published in Dawn, January 25th, 2026