She’s one of the most accomplished artists in Pakistan and is celebrated both at home and abroad. However, Sabina Gillani humbly, and firmly, wants to be known as a “printmaker who paints”, always placing the focus on the medium she established herself in first, even though she is just as established in painting.

It’s only when artists take an interest in the seemingly ordinary does that ‘ordinariness’ become immortalised. It becomes something special. Sabina Gillani showed exactly that in her recent exhibition held at the Canvas Gallery in Karachi.

Titled ‘Hazaar Dastaan’ [A Thousand Tales], the exhibition forced us to confront our own collective demons as a country head on. Sabina Gillani has spent the last few years giving of herself to her craft, drawing and painting images that depict the various outcomes of terrorist attacks in Pakistan. And she has done that in dizzying detail.

Sabina Gillani’s artworks on terrorism set up a much-needed dialogue on its nature and its aftermath

She’s taken items such as suicide jackets, explosives, wire clusters, detonators — inanimate objects — and immortalised them in her art, but in a way that makes you think, deeply. Sabina Gillani’s work reminds us of a past that’s still very much a part of the present. For some, terrorism may seem like something that happened a long time ago, but the reason why ‘Hazaar Dastaan’ is relevant today is because it didn’t really happen a long time ago. Terrorism continues to be a part of our present-day reality.

‘Hazaar Dastaan’ has works that not only include oblique references to extremism and violence, but terrorism’s potential and actual victims are also depicted on mixed media works on paper, through the weapons used on them and the bloodshed that ensues as a result of such actions. And she captures all of this in painstaking detail. You cannot help but be impressed.

The artworks have been created using pigment or paint, tea stains and gouache on handmade paper. Shedding light on terrorism and its aftermath is obviously something the artist feels very strongly about, considering she has spent several years on the same theme. This is not the first time she’s produced artwork on this topic — some of the art was created between 2009 and 2019.

Each art piece tells a multiple-layered story — hazaar dastaan all around you.

This exhibition is not for the faint of heart or those that may still suffer from the trauma of times when conflict was an even more saddening common occurrence. She portrays blood through intricately spilled paint and uses it to stain her art.

According to art critic Quddus Mirza, “These layers — different saturations, stages and spread of blood, allude to a sad situation but these are also an artist’s marks, delightfully produced, sensitively overlapped and seductively modulated.”

Salima Hashmi, who curated the exhibition says, “Ever mindful of the turbulence of our times, she [Sabina Gillani] keeps her focus unerringly on a deeper manifestation of human survival. This is reflected in gently layered surfaces, oblique historical references and allegiance to meticulous, poetic mark-making.

“Meanings have to be excavated in Sabina Gillani’s delicate works, which are loath to give up their secrets without setting up an intensive dialogue with the viewer.”

It is, however, a dialogue that’s much-needed in the current scenario.

‘Hazaar Dastaan’ by Sabina Gillani was exhibited at Canvas Gallery, Karachi, from January 14-27, 2022

Published in Dawn, EOS, February 13th, 2022