KARACHI: A dastaan in Urdu is a story which can be a fable or a saga. Tilism-i-Hoshruba is one of them. It contains a wide range of characters, from monarchs to the common man, that exist in a realm of magic and mystique. When a painter or sculptor draws inspiration from such a tale, what does he try to achieve? This is the question that one might ask while visiting an exhibition of Imran Channa’s latest body of work titled Tilism-i-Hoshruba.exe,which concludes at the Canvas Art Gallery on Aug 13.

Channa is an accomplished artist. Again, why has he made a reference to a magical world? It is an engaging scenario. Consider this: we now live in a world in which artificial intelligence (AI) is threatening to take control of everything human, including creativity. Some people doubt that. Some don’t.

Channa has done something interesting in that connection. But before going into what he’s done, it would be apt to know that the artist has always been interested in looking back on the history of the country he was born in. Keeping that in mind, the exhibition can be chiefly divided into two sets of artworks. One, is the ‘Enchanted Land’ series and the other are the exhibits made with 3D print, PVC material and soundtrack.

To elucidate further, Channa in his statement says, “Enchanted Land consists of imagined landscapes that don’t exist yet feel familiar, serene mountains, cascading waterfalls, veiled woods and visions promised by politics and faith alike… I feed this fantasy to the machine, asking AI to generate visions of heaven. By intervening in these AI generated images, painting them with gouache on paper and oil on canvas, I assert the presence of the human hand, blurring the boundary between the machine-made and the emotionally charged… Tangible Fiction arises from the void left by one of the largest displacements in modern history [in 1947].”

The phrase ‘human hand’ is significant here, because once the viewer starts witnessing the pieces on view in both sections, the contribution of that hand, despite the palpable involvement of non-human intelligence, will come across as unmistakable. This is the kind of technical refinement and creative magic that Channa’s work is replete with.

Super impressive!

Published in Dawn, August 10th, 2025