KARACHI: William Shakespeare in his plays uses forests in a multipurpose way. He places them as locales for showing both nature’s benevolence and wrath, and also as a kind of diversion from everyday life’s happenings to exigencies that are identifiable with man’s original habitat.

A group show titled Ingrained: Wood in a Cross Section of Time,curated by Naila Mahmood and Zahra Ebrahim, at the Koel Art Gallery is a poetic attempt at associating time with trees in the sense that no matter how deep man invests himself in the labyrinth of contemporary, urban and technologically advances world, he won’t be able to ignore, or get shot of, his roots.

A note put up by the gallery articulates the idea in the following words. “In the architecture of wood, time quietly reveals itself. Trees carry the memory of growth, rupture and renewal within their bodies. Yet they are more than material: they are metaphors of rootedness and resilience, of belonging and displacement, of innovation and legacy. As living witnesses, trees witness our personal and collective histories. Their forms hold the weight of national identities, cultural memory, and the struggle over land and ecology. To read wood is to enter a dialogue with time…”

Dialogue with time… what a nice phrase! Dialogue happens between two or more than two people. Therefore, the personification of wood is a splendid way of telling the viewer that it is part of our geographic and aesthetic being. There are more than one dozen artists whose work (acacia, bynyan, oak, sandalwood, etc) is on display, including that of two architects — Sohail Abdullah and Khadija-tul-Kubra. They have done a remarkable job in engaging in a dialogue which results in the creation of artworks that are pleasing to the eye and food for the soul.

The artists who are taking part in the show are: Sibte-e-Hassan Azad, Nida Bangish, Arshad Faruqui, Ustad Hanif Khan, Raasmia Haque, Sarosh Hebatzai, Madiha Hyder, Junaid Ul Islam, Faraz Mateen, Zoral Naik, Anushka Rustomji, Usman Saeed, Asif Sinan and Raka Studio.

The exhibition will conclude on Sept 6.

Published in Dawn, August 17th, 2025