KARACHI: Whoever says that s/he can lead a life utterly detached from the political goings-on is not telling the truth. This is why the artist community keeps emphasising the need for turning the political into the socio-cultural, an evidence of which can

be seen at a two-person exhibition titled Bureaucracies of Imagination that opened at the Canvas Gallery on Tuesday.

Of the two artists, Moonis Shah is more vociferous in his visual tones than Mahbub Jokhio who opts for a comparatively subtler approach. Both are equally effective and find communication with the viewer not a hectic task. They are clearly deeply rooted in the society they hail from and whatever transpires there compels them to express themselves.

Shah is interested in raising questions about the issues that make the contemporary world a difficult place to live in. These questions, as the artist says in his statement, relate to issues such as migration and the blurring or thickening line (depending on which side of the ideological fence you stand) between the local and the global. The series ‘When it rained, wind carried it to places unimaginable’ (print on canvas) tackles it in a manner that aptly highlights the problem by showing the kind of psychosocial trauma that’s attached to it. However, the wonders that imagination can come up with — that sometimes come to rescue us — are also not free. There are certain Kafkaesque bureaucratic hurdles within ourselves, erected because of the way society conditions us, that impede our progress to find a way out of the situation. The message is: we mustn’t stop trying.

Jokhio takes the show to a different domain with his delicate looking charcoal-on-paper artworks. His metaphors don’t readily unfold with eye-catching pieces such as ‘Red Pen’ and ‘Blue Pen’. But when the viewer looks at the exhibit called ‘Jungle’ (origami objects made out of found paper) the artist’s intentions become clearer. The metaphor of a boat, amplified in another charcoal piece ‘Kashti’, is an important one. Not just a boat, mind you, but one made of paper — indicating a journey without a destination.

The exhibition concludes on May 3.

Published in Dawn, April 25th, 2018