ISLAMABAD, Jan 25: The eloquent sculptures put on show at Nomad Gallery make you want to shrink in size to see and admire them from inside.

The exhibition - Silent Whispers - of terracotta and stoneware sculptures is like an ode to heritage. Ceramic artist Jamil Hussain, in love with the built heritage, surprised and delighted his visitors on the preview day on Wednesday with his new collections of inspired impressions of Pakistan's ancient architecture.

The exhibition presents the full range of his inspired eccentricity in clay and stone. Silent Whispers is about the ability to hear the voice of agony and pain around us in the form of dilapidating historical monuments. The artist within Jamil Hussain is sensitive to listen to these whispers and also to empathise with these silent cries of torment.

"Silent Whispers is an attempt to create awareness about the deterioration and destruction of Pakistan's marvelous heritage. All these vistas of our past in the form of monuments and buildings have been part of our lives for a long time and they carry within themselves centuries-old history," Jamil Hussain explained.

The artist is haunted by childhood obsessions with built heritage and fondness to play with clay. He has been impressed with the wet clay for its silken touch, malleability to adapt any shape, its readiness to bend, fold and mold and the ease with which it facilitates the artist to sculpt.

Like a reminder of a glorious past, the displays include his impressions of Purani Anarkali, ruins, horizontal balconies and jharokas and large-scale sculptures that tell stories, some decorated with attractive colours and others lit up with tiny bulbs inside. Some of the terracotta sculptures took the artist three to four months to build.

"The rich and varied heritage pervades through our historical cities and towns, reverberates in our bazaars, streets and alleys and pulsates through mosques and mausoleums, havelis and majestic forts," said the artists, his heart heavy when he recalled their dilapidating conditions and that inspired one of the most attractive art works in the exhibition titled "Malba Barai Frokht" that the artist roughly interpreted and described as culture for sale.

Through his work, the artist endeavours to create awareness to save the built heritage from the avarice of land mafia, the plaza culture of town developers and negligence of heritage managers, he said.

A colourful catalogue accompanies the exhibition that will run till next week.