KARACHI: It is not easy to define the concept of infinity. One of the obvious meanings of the word that is ‘uncountable’. The other is ‘limitless’. In Urdu poetry, it has also been employed to denote the endlessness of time with phrases such as azal ta abad. All these connotations are weighty and brim with meaningfulness. However, they have an air of intangibility about them. In art, when a painter or a sculptor uses this term, since artists express themselves visually, an element of tactility comes into play.

An exhibition of Ayesha Siddiqui’s artworks that’s concluded on Wednesday at the Koel Art Gallery is named Infinity. Looking at her creative output, one can safely say that she knows well the significance of geometrical shapes and how to enhance their power, or lend an extra layer of meaning to them, by an effective use of colours.

The artist bio says she has a doctorate in fine arts studio practice and is a gold medallist in MA Fine Arts. This is awe-inspiring enough for anyone to view her paintings with a great deal of attention. But that’s not it. Even a fleeting look at her artworks will reveal her passionate love for creating images with cerebral flair.

In her statement she raises a pertinent point: “...For many, the failure to decipher a work is similar to blind viewing. But is then infinity an absence of conclusiveness? No, in fact, it leads to visual eternity in time and space.”

The eternity that Ayesha is referring to is to do with the creative process and the fecundity of ideas. She doesn’t seem to attach importance to failure to decipher an exhibit because there’s more to it than meets the eye. The images that she has come up with in her paintings drip with energy. Even if the viewer finds it hard to connect the dots through the shapes that cover her eye-catching frames, they gradually begin to make sense, bit by bit, diminishing the distance between nature and eternity.

Published in Dawn, July 6th, 2023