KARACHI: Here’s a fascinating idea: a painter tells another painter about how he’s feeling these days requesting the latter to make an artwork about the former’s feeling. The result will invariably be of an intriguing quality, because it’s the skill and understanding of one creative individual employed to construe someone else’s — who, too, is creative — ideas. This is the crux of a group show titled Repondez s’ll vous plait that can be seen at the Full Circle Gallery.

In case anyone’s wondering about the title, the French phrase is commonly abbreviated as RSVP meaning ‘please reply’ or ‘respond’. There are two curators of the show — Zara Sajid and Scheherezade Junejo. This is how they explain the whole exercise: “After having lived through a global pandemic, we’ve had to evolve. Internal conflicts and pressures have substantially affected our methods of expression. Unsolicited laws of interaction now govern us. We’ve had to adapt mentally, physically and emotionally. The exhibition invited each artist to draft a text that links to the concept mentioned above. It could be a narrative, an open letter, a response etc, in a language that resonated with them. This was the first stage of the production. The second was when each of these texts was shared with another artist for the construction of their work. The point was not to treat it as a supportive piece… but more as a collaborative process that began once the artist received another artist’s ‘concept note.’”

Isn’t that exciting! What the viewer gets to see, consequently, is an abundance of subjects exploding with delightful colours, intriguing shapes and imaginative figures. Most of those whose paintings are on display are known men and women and their (trademark) works are readily identifiable; and yet there’s certain newness to their effort which is quite refreshing. (For example, Irfan Gul’s interpretation of Muhammad Zeeshan’s concept.) This also lends variety to the content or source material. Therefore subjects as varied as solitude and cosmic realities are touched upon.

The artists who are taking part in the exhibition which concludes on March 4 are: Jamil Baloch, Nurayah Nabi, Sohail Zuberi, Scheherezade Junejo, Muhammad Zeeshan, Affan Baghpati, Irfan Gul Dahri, Zareen Ashraf, Rabeya Jaleel, Sahyr Syed, Faizan Riedinger, Farrukh Shahab, Noman Siddiqui, Abid Aslam and Atif Khan.

Published in Dawn, February 26th, 2022