KARACHI: If you have even a modicum of interest in Pakistani art, you would know who Noorjehan Bilgrami is — a top-notch artist. And if you have a profound knowledge of the culture and environs of the subcontinent, especially Delhi and Hyderabad, from which stemmed great literature and folklore, you would definitely be aware of a tree called molsri (also spelt maulsri). Combine these two and you get an absorbing array of artworks by Ms Bilgrami put together in an exhibition titled Under the molsri tree that opened at the Koel Art Gallery on Thursday.

The molsri is a middle-sized green tree with long evergreen leaves. It has white flowers and beery fruit. But that’s not why Ms Bilgrami has chosen to make it the epicentre of her show. She is clearly talking about nostalgia here — nostalgia for bygone days, for the people close to her, for the time when life did not move like a bullet train. This is more than evident from the first eight exhibits ‘Under the molsri tree’ (acrylic, graphite, silk cloth, and rice paper on arches paper; print segments in archival ink). Quite a few things are happening in these pieces, and what’s common in them is the background shaded or covered by the tree. The fact that the artist has translated the name of the exhibition into Urdu ‘Molsri ke saaey taley’ suggests that she wants to emphasise that the saaya lends a comforting feeling to the whole exercise, hence the reinstatement of, in the words of Milan Kundera, suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.

Then the show moves ahead a step with the ‘Safar’ series (indigo dye, acrylic, indigo-dyed cloth, rice paper and graphite on arches paper). The safar, or journey, is a clear indicator that life has progressed but without losing sight of the things, the accompaniments, that were a major component of the times spent under the molsri tree. It is a fascinating experience to witness these artworks.

The show, curated by Maha Malik, will run till Feb 9.

Published in Dawn, January 30th, 2015

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