EXHIBITION: THE NATURE OF TRUTH
Muzzamil Ruheel is an artist whose practice is difficult to describe because it encompasses a wide range of subjects and mediums, neatly tied together through his visual use of text. “My work is not based on a single notion, but is drawn from an open process of observing and gathering visual and conceptual materials,” he explains. His work, thus, spans social, political, historical and religious themes articulated through a personal perspective, resulting in a whimsical satire of our times.
His latest body of work at the Canvas Gallery, Hearsay, is a similar rendition of stories collected over two years of travelling across Pakistan — stories of power, greed, betrayal, spirituality, revenge and politics, diverse in their content but connected through a single question — is it truth or fiction? These verbally relayed stories linked to certain localities have the quality of myths and legends, and as the artists searched for evidence in official documents, he discovered some to be completely missing, while others existed in various versions.
In the piece ‘Robber Or Robin’, the artist refers to a story about a man who defied an oppressive regime and became a local hero, a leader chosen by the people to free them from tyranny. Yet he was remembered as a bandit, thief and rebel, as the rulers of the land tried to suppress his uprising and paint him as a villain. One man’s rebel is another man’s freedom fighter, and it all depends on what you choose to believe, which eventually defines who you are and where you come from.
Muzzamil Ruheel investigates the fine line between fact and fabrication
The truth lies somewhere buried at the bottom of fiction, and the artist seeks to merely present questions for the viewers to ponder, providing no definite answers of his own. In his distinct style he comments on differences of perception through a barrage of beautifully calligraphed Urdu text relaying the collected stories in their raw, unedited form. As the text overlaps and fuses into the background, almost a texture on the surface, it’s near obscurity and sudden visibility from certain angles mimics this fickle nature of history.