Pakistan is still the most misogynistic and testosterone-fuelled place in the world, but there has at least been some awareness of the evil of honour killing. The latest voice to be heard is that of 35 Pakistani artists currently exhibiting at the VM Gallery, Karachi, who have pictorially chronicled these crimes in an exhibition entitled, ‘No honour in killing’.

The astonishing variety which is being presented ranges from the subtle and abstruse to the crude and basic. However, one finds a number of canvases which have little or nothing to do with either honour or killing and which have been tossed in probably because the artist felt a viewer might find a connection.

Sylvat Aziz’s single green tent plunked in the middle of the countryside and Tazeen Qayum’s bit of chinoiserie are a case in point. The most riveting piece in the display is ‘The powder room’ by Maria Aftab. What profound use of colour. The red wallpaper, red sink and red towel provide the placid background for the mirror that no longer exists and has been replaced by a pencilled in rectangle. This is Aftab’s way of saying that the woman of the house is no more! Saba Invarsson takes the theme of absence a little further by reflecting the bust of a woman in a mirror. But the likeness shows only the back of the head.

Another entrancing and somewhat arcane illustration is a photograph by Ghania Asad which shows a table on which there nestles a bowl containing locks of a woman’s hair. Salman Hassan displayed a garish touch to a lurid theme when he adds a splash of blood on a woman’s costume, while further down in the nether region a fly feeds on, and is partially soaked in, human blood.

A woman’s eyes in a green face peeping through a crack in a wooden fence splattered with blood, is Sonia Ahmed’s way of demonstrating fear and trepidation. Wajid Ali’s victim is without eyes; while a chain, at the end of which there is an open lock, dangles from her mouth. Zara David’s lovely landscape is peaceful and serene and the viewer’s heart goes out to the lonely gentle figure draped from head to foot in white walking away from the viewer and heading for the seashore.

For those who watch horror movies there is Amin Rehman’s severed head, Kashif Ali Mangi’s hanged woman, Kaif Ghaznavi’s isolated face and scattered body parts , and Naseem Burgari’s amputated limbs. Khuda Bux Abro’s collection of waxed moustaches turned up at the ends, floating around a coffin, is a little macabre.

And while Naima Dadabhoy introduces a bit of cartography, Riffat Alvi has her smoke drawings, Mobna Zuberi her pictorial depiction of cancelling out a life, Reeta Saeed her net of thick white fibres and Amin Gulgee his collection of heads of female child-brides sown together in a floral wreath.

There are also paintings by Roohi Ahmed and Abdullah Syed whose two axes were used on the cover of the invitation, Sana Arjumand, whose woman has huge elliptical eyes and wears a crown on her head. Other participating artists are Simeen Farhat, Abdul Majeed Mangi, Maham Mujtaba, Mariun Agha, Mir Askari, Nida Bangash, Noorul Ain Pirzada, Akram Dost Baloch and his gauze screens, Fawzia Minalla, Abdul Jabber Gul, and Abdulla Qamar.