Through the lens of art

Students showcased their artworks in a bid to highlight society’s issues

Karachi: While using thought provoking artworks, young artists have highlighted various aspects of the society to impart knowledge regarding the burning issues of the people. The Shaheed Allah Buksh Soomro University of Art Design and Heritages (SABS) Jamshoro held its 17th annual degree show to provide opportunity for students to know and judge their own skills.

During the event, the students were provided with the opportunity to be trained in the due process of finishing their selected projects such as paintings, sculptures, ceramics and printmaking.

The main objective of the event was to help the pupils in enhancing and polishing their abilities and acquired inbuilt skills, while preparing them to enter their creative fields as young trained and groomed artists and designers.

Around 25 graduating students showcased their talent and interests through their artworks. They were assisted and guided by teachers in achieving their goals, including Thesis Coordinators Painting, Shaukat Ali Khokhar and Kashif Shehzad; Miniature Painting, Amjad Ali Talpur; PrintMaking, Fazal Ellahi Khan; Sculpture, Safdar Ali and Ceramics, Quratulain.

Zubair Ahmed Bhutto, Sajid Ali Talpur, Nusrat Mangi and Tahir Ali participated in the event as Thesis Advisors. While playing with the contemporary themes, Ariba Mughal used traditional methods of miniature painting to address the state of the society in her artworks titled ‘Indirect Truth’.

Through her art, Ariba shed light on how people in the society judge others, and used idioms to talk about other people just for fun without considering its consequences. She used balloon, chair and hammer symbolically for the people’s attitudes towards others. Soherah Iman’s work dealt with the mental health stigma. Her printmaking works titled ‘Mental Decay’, showed excessive medicines a person dealing with mental health problems has to take to act normal in the eyes of society.

She herself had gone through such a situation and shared her personal experience through her artworks.

Aiman Fatima’s printmaking works titled ‘Sufferance’, criticised the tolerance in the society in the name of respect. For her, millions of young bright minds were killed because of this unnatural behaviour of the people.

Sidra Zafar’s ceramics balloons portrayed love, happiness and joy. Her works titled ‘Euphoria’, talked about the real meaning of happiness and joy. Sidra used gifts symbolically to portray her theme, as gifts are the symbol of love and happiness.

She wanted to convey that happiness is fragile, but the people think it is durable. Sidra used balloons that are symbols of happiness, but deflate in a short time losing their shape and appearance.

Muneeba’s ‘Face the Frights’ ceramics works portrayed the fear a person feels when encountering a bad dream. She believes that people do not acknowledge such feelings until they go through the same.

Through her artwork, she portrayed how the fear of the nightmare becomes reality and that while dreaming the fear makes a person frightful, but the person has to deal with it alone.

She symbolically used an image of a joker in her works, which is a symbol of joy but can also create fear. Faisal Channa’s door sculptures were sculpted around the idea of door opening in a certain direction, meant to be pushed or pulled to open, meaning a door can be operated in both directions and that can be confusing for a person.

He used Norman door terminology as a metaphor and connected this terminology with the people’s social and self-structure. A door has two meanings; when it opens for someone it gives hope and happiness and when it closes it creates fear and disappointment. Therefore doors have an important part in peoples’ lives, which Faisal wanted to discuss through his sculptures.

Mohsin Mustafa and Muhammad Hussain showed different perspectives of the same thing through their paintings.

The event also included artwork from various artists including Azhar Sheraz’s paintings titled ‘Rust in Peace’; Warisha Ghouri’s ‘Vulnerability’; Asma Saeed Memon’s ‘The Poetics of Space’; Sheva Ram’s ‘Hypnotic Sensation’; Hamdah Azam’s ‘Faslay’; Maryam Khan’s ‘Desire’; Anna Khowaja’s ‘Cultural Diversity’.

Ayesha As’am’s ‘Dil to Bacha hai’; Aqsa Abid’s ‘A far-away beauty is often flawed upclose’; Kaneez Fatima’s ‘Introspection and catharsis’; Ayan Aftab Hussain’s ‘No Signal’; Tahreem Memon’s ‘Reminiscent’; Marvi Qazi’s ‘Dastaan’; Asifa Sher’s ‘Treasured’; Sharmeen Umrani’s ‘Ordinary’; Areesha Khan’s ‘Composition of Decomposition’; and Maham Mughal’s ‘Izterab (Bechayni) were also in the limelight during the event.