The inception of Asna in 1997 was a shot in the arm for contemporary ceramics in Pakistan. Today three triennials later it not only continues to be its most effective promoter but has gone a notch higher in quality of content in its fourth edition now showing at VM Gallery, Karachi.

Young generation ceramists nurtured on Asna’s extensive agendas of exhibitions, dialogues, seminars, workshops and Kumhar Melas are now experimenting with greater confidence, flair and enthusiasm. In the current display 16 Pakistani ceramists /artists are showing their work alongside 60 ceramists from 16 countries and their works compare favourably with their international counterparts.

World famous ceramists like Elizabeth La Retief (France), Jhon Skognes (Norway), Sevim Cizer (Turkey), Ela Mukherjee (India), Gopal Das Sherestha (Nepal) are among the foreign participants many of whom have been instrumental in establishing contemporary ceramics in their country and building a discourse around the medium.

Sculptural works by Pakistani participants blended well with other pieces. A quiet display of paper thin tumblers in foggy greys by Sadia Salim was simply exquisite. Clay was seduced to materialise as corrugated paper; the vessels marked the ceramist’s intense interaction with her medium and considerable tenacity to push the envelope.

Raania Durrani’s ceramic piece, ‘Mystery Nivala Prelude’ the bite-sized meals mounted on a series of six boxes, pasta circled around a fork, fried eggs, chopsticks and dumplings, shrimps and tofu bits, etc, spoke of ingenuity and joyous engagement with the genre.

Sprouting vertically, a crop of fresh tender shoots, tendrils/ vines in terracotta by Aliya Yousaf, simply titled, ‘The lightness of thoughts’ was very imaginative. Adept at illustrating nature through imagery of botanical and cellular biology the artist brought a new variation to her repertoire.

Fresh from a residency in Bali Indonesia Nabahat Lotia’s ‘Bali Bagus Log’ (good people of Bali) was a collection of extruded forms of the people of Bali living together in harmony. The stoneware pieces were fired in a bottle shaped wood firing kiln made from raw bricks which was stoked nonstop with banyan tree wood for 19 hours till the temperatures reached 1250 C. Salt was thrown in at this stage and kiln left to cool down for two more days. The texture and shine on the pieces are the combination of wood ash and salt deposits.

A product of Central Institute of Arts and Crafts, Karachi, Fahim Rao received his diploma in fine arts in 2005 and has since experimented with several mediums like wood, terracotta and fibre glass. His striking metal /terracotta piece in the Asna show was executed with considerable finesse.

Abeer Asim a promising young ceramist who also runs a commercial studio, Mud Pie, has already enthralled viewers with her ‘Lalaland series’ celebrating the iconic rickshaw vehicle culture. Her current entry, ‘Soul searching’, is a ponderous exhibit in paper, clay and mix media. Work ethos of established names like Tariq Javed, Salman Ikram, Munawwar Ali Syed etc., remained stable without springing any surprises.

In an exhibition dominated by contemporary expression, pioneer Shehrazade Alam’s ‘Touched by Lightness’ exhibits paid homage to tradition. Her radiant vessels gilded or touched with gold leaf referred to an inner luminosity and her performance on the Asna inaugural ‘Mitti waley haath’ highlighted man’s elemental connection with the earth.

Clay as a metaphor for life was well interpreted in Faraz Mateen’s installation with video and fired clay. Referencing Bulleh Shah’s verse Maati Qadam Karendi, he filmed a layer by layer creation and disassembling of a human clay bust/portrait to evoke the spirit of ‘fanaa’— the ultimate lightness of being.

The value of tradition also found soulful expression in Swiss ceramist Claude Presset’s keynote address at the opening. As curator of an exceptional collection based just on tea cups she explained, “In the hands of master craftspeople each cup is more than a vessel that holds tea. There is history, culture and tradition in each cup. With the touring ceramics exhibition 1001 Cups we pay homage to the traditional little Indian teacup by presenting a vast panorama of contemporary ceramic creation in all its richness and vitality.”

One hundred contemporary ceramists from five continents were asked to create a series of 10 variations each based on the universal theme of the cup. The exhibition shows four basic trends in the evolution of the cup — tradition, tradition in evolution, reinterpretation and experimentation. Each artist has created a series of 10 different cups but all cantering on a single technique. Ranging from the most archaic to the most recent, a multitude of techniques is presented, from smoke-fired polished clay to the thinnest porcelain.