ISLAMABAD: A group exhibition of seven disparate artists –Afshar Malik, Alia Bilgrami, Anwar Saeed, Nadya Hussain, Naiza Khan, Quddus Mirza and Salima Hashmi – opened at the Rohtas Gallery.

With no thematic congruence or similarity in style or medium, the exhibition was literally a case of its title –Celebrating Seven.

Despite the restricted traffic movement due to the upcoming D8 meeting in the capital, the exhibition was well-attended as the Gallery hosted a mix of young art students, artists and members of the diplomatic community.

Alia Bilgrami, one of the younger artists whose work was showcased, said she was honoured to be part of a show featuring such senior artists such as Salima Hashmi.

Her favourite pieces in the exhibition were Ms. Hashmi’s two paintings which Alia said were a departure from the work she had seen in the past five years as they were distinctly less abstract. Salima Hashmi’s paintings, unlike her oft-times politically fraught and abstract work, were almost Japanese in choice of colours, technique and medium.

Made with tea wash, pigment, acrylic, collage, gold leaf and rubber stampings, and titled ‘Song begins elsewhere I & II’, the works were exquisite. Another young artist displaying her work is Nadya Hussain, a teacher at the National College of Arts (NCA) in Rawalpindi.

Her six pieces were small ink drawings of a pregnant woman, obviously both fecund and weary. Nadya, who has titled her series What dreams may come, believes they stem from fantasies of being pregnant and she has managed to capture the essence of the state because many of her models have been pregnant women.

Tob of the Norwegian Embassy said it was very unusual to see this sort of a representation of pregnant women in Pakistan. She added, “The artist has grasped the mood of being pregnant and the sense of heaviness that women feel.”

Nadya’s favourite works were, however, Anwar Saeed’s digital prints and Afshar Malik’s ink and wash on paper.

Aqeel, a visitor to the gallery, said he had seen both Nadya’s and Alia’s works previously. While Nadya’s sketches were very different from her previous, more abstract paintings, he said Alia had carried forward her tulip motif.

Ella, also from the Norwegian Embassy, said the exhibition was an interesting blend of senior artists and young ones. The works differed from artist to artist as each had a unique style and captured a different mood.

The show will continue till January 3, 2014.

The Rohtas Gallery had been founded by Suhail Abbasi, Naeem Pasha and Salima Hashmi in Rawalpindi/Islamabad in 1981.

Its stated objective was to showcase art which had no support in Zia’s era. Artists who exhibited with Rohtas include Zubaida Agha, Zahoorul Akhlaq, Jamil Naqsh, Mussarat Mirza, Salima Hashmi, Shahid Sajjad, Sheherzade Alam and Sallahuddin Mian.

Many artists also commenced their careers in the 1980’s at Rohtas including Anwar Saeed, Shazia Sikandar, Quddus Mirza, Naazish Ataullah and Imran Qureshi, a tradition that Rohtas is carrying on till date.