KARACHI: Curiosity is one of the essential characteristics of romanticism. It is the act of being curious which leads people to discover things about themselves and about seemingly extraneous aspects of their lives. This is what has driven renowned artist Irfan Hasan to come up with a striking body of work which is on display at the Canvas Art Gallery.

Irfan has titled his show The Children of Ambiguity. The reason that he gives for this in his statement is that though he has found some similarities between the different tribes that reside in Pakistan and the people whose portraits were drawn by classical European artists, “many facts still remain ambiguous”. He mentions ‘facts’ not ‘truths’ because truth is, and can be, subjective and fact requires a great deal of objectivity to approve of or refute. Irfan understands this point well.

There’s an array of exceedingly interesting artworks on view. In all of them, the confluence of two geo-cultural worlds creates images which despite their apparent differences have a visual harmony to them. It can be interpreted both as a similarity of physical features in multiple entities or undiscovered territorial sameness.

As a result, what the viewer sees is a bunch of images of people ranging from Mehsud to Jadoon tribes and from Kashmir to Swat valleys juxtaposed with attributes that are not generally associated with them. For a moment the paintings look like an attempt to dig deep into history. It may be that. But it is just as well a simple articulation of the idea that there is oneness in us that we tend to ignore.

In that connection, ‘A Girl from Swat Valley I’ (opaque watercolour on paper) is an intriguing work of art. If the viewer can focus only on the beautiful eyes of the protagonist, the artist’s drift will be easy to understand.

The exhibition will run till Sept 29.

Published in Dawn, September 27th, 2016