KARACHI: Performance art and photography are not an unusual combo. In fact, they can be mutually beneficial because while photography freezes a moment in time to impart a touch of permanence to it, performance art does the same by virtue of the transience of an (ongoing) act. This was witnessed recently at an exhibition titled No Filters at the Alliance Francaise. The performance bit, though, was for the first day. And it was a pretty eventful evening. There were artists immersed in their assignments, complying with the theme of ‘no filters’, which basically implied that there was a lack of veneer in their creative pursuits.

Now, there were more than two dozen artists taking part in the show, so it is impossible to do justice to each one of them. Therefore, a general view of their efforts would suffice.

One of the photographers focused on faces. The interesting thing that the artist did was that he put those faces in the context of Karachi’s architectural grandeur. He did that in a way that both became a reflection of each other’s presence. Broader meaning: despite time’s tyranny they seemed to be hanging on.

Then another artist emphasised the importance of being nice to animals. What kind of animals? Stray ones. The artist knows that there’s a segment of society that looks at other species with compassion. But the animals that have no ‘owners’, so to say, are not always treated in a kind way. This largely happens due to a lack of compassion, not education, in us. So the artist made no bones about it, and opted not to apply any filters in his presentation to suggest that caring about animals reflected on us as a society.

This is just a taste of what’s there in the gallery. Performance-wise, the reading of stories, the deferential reference to Frida Kahlo and the overall creative ambience that the show was suffused with bore testimony to the hard work that curator Pomme Amina Gohar put in to make the exhibition possible.

The exhibition concludes on Nov 24. The following are the participating artists: Abdul Jabbar Gull, Shelley Pirzada, Amean J, Humayun Memon, Jamal Ashiqain, Arif Mahmood, Ali Khurshid, Amin Gulgee, Soraya Sikandar, Shahzaib Shaikh, Erum Ero, Asad Kamran, Mishaal Khan, Sara Pagganwala, Oriane Zerah, Summaiya Jillani, Syed Ammad Tahir, Vajdaan Shah, Alee Hassan, Jibran Shahid, Omair Ahmed, Muna Siddiqi, Masuma Halai, Rumana Husain and Zurain Imam.

Published in Dawn, November 21st, 2018