The invite to the exhibition said it all, “The earth we walk is as unpredictable as nature itself. It gets hard, it gets soft, it splits open in volcanic mountains and it also makes way for the river to flow…” Even if you did not read the whole text printed on the invite, you’d know that the exhibition was to do with ceramics.

It was sheer delight to see nine of the country’s known artists take part in an exhibition of ceramics titled, ‘Revelations’ organised at the Indus Valley School Gallery, Karachi, from February 1 (it will run till February 15).

The display had a wide variety of exhibits which touched on an equally wide variety of topics. What augmented the interest of the viewers in ‘Revelations’ was the intriguing statements issued by artists on the subject. If on the one hand, they made the understanding of their work a tad uncomplicated, on the other hand, they also provided the viewers with a chance to interpret the exhibits by putting themselves in the artists’ shoes.

According to the gallery curator, all of the work was done in terracotta. Throughout history terracotta has been used for various purposes, but it also has a symbolic value. In some cases it has been linked with fertility, and obviously the word ‘clay’ covers a whole gamut of meaning associated with the frailty (and strength) of human existence. But the nine participating artists had also placed the art form in a contemporary setting.

Riffat Alvi’s work stood out in the exhibition. Not just because of the symbolism that the artist used it for, but also for the finesse with which her pieces ‘Chilman’ and ‘Home sweet home’ were made. The latter had white birds as ‘silent protestors on the prevailing human atrocities in present times’.

Aliya Yusuf’s effort was to ‘turn the intangible into tangible’, whereas Sara Mahmood through her work commented on pertinent social issues. Fahim Rao used soil as his metaphor for the beginning as well as the end of a human existence while Nabahat Lotia employed firing techniques to suggest the need to connect to the gods. Abeer Asim had a somewhat similar aim (a spiritual connection through an abstract expressionist visual) as did Hameer Soomro; and Raania Durrani treated ‘text as a significant component of her work’.

This meant that all the artists had one thing in common: their concern for the rapid socio-political degradation of society. What was worth praising about them was that through their creative endeavours they did not overstate their concern by being predictable or in-your-face. Instead, there was a certain method to their individual take using terracotta, dealing with ceramics and how effectively to propagate their message.

Apart from the beautiful range of the exhibits, one thing which the curator of the Indus Valley School Gallery, Ambreen Naz, looked happy about was the fact that almost all of the work done by the nine artists was recent. They did not opt to approach the art form either in a derivative form or in a way which would give a déjà vu vibe.