There was plenty to reflect on as one immersed oneself in all forms of artful expression at the day-long art show, ‘A Picture of Hope’, at the Arts Council of Pakistan in Karachi last Sunday. The show had been organised by Dawn Relief: The Way Forward.

There were paintings, pop art, photography, mixed-media, old newspaper posters capturing important moments from history and so much more in the big hall. The artworks covered the walls, hung from iron racks, and were placed on tables and tripods.

The coffee-stains-on-canvas from artist Fizza Saleem’s Transmute series brought together the clouds in the skies, the waves in the oceans and dust storms in deserts. Umair Ghani’s mixed-medium picture A Window for Worship drew one in from afar. Zooming in on the lone woman devotee, holding her dotted peacock blue veil over her head, one couldn’t also miss the traditional indigo-printed Sindhi Hala tiled wall of a shrine with the yellow, green and white contrasts bringing out the inidigo in the picture.

The angle selected by Pervaiz Ahmed Khan to click Shifting Sands captures not just the desert dunes and craters in the white sand but also what’s beyond it. Amazingly, it looks like a river flowing, with hills in the background, and before it is grassy green land and trees. It has all of nature, from mountains to rivers, sand and vegetation. Though it is just a picture, Mohammed Arif Ali’s Racing Ahead, from a village near Lahore, had you imagining the sounds that would accompany an ox-racing scene. There is a pair of oxen tied to a wooden board, straddled by a very worried looking racer trying to drive them around a circular course.

Dawn Relief’s Art Show was more than just an exhibition. It was a way to contribute to flood relief

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Jr contributed shadowy nudes, a fusion of photography and paints, while Beygum Bano’s digital prints, from her This & That Art series, were like little explosions of colour beckoning you to a wonderland that looked more amazing than Alice’s Wonderland.

Other artists at the show included Ashir Bhatti, Daft Draft, Faizan Riedinger, IRDK Maham, K. Align, Mughal Empress, Ali Khurshid, Arif Mahmood, Ayesha Vellani, Kohi Marri, Mahmood Qureshi, Stephan Andrew, Tapu Javeri, Marium Kamal and Safwan Subzwari. The latter two are a husband-and-wife team who also joined forces to work on a live mural, a fusion of modern and pop art bringing up a chaos of brown lips and pink flowers, green leaves, faces and deep eyes that looked back at all those looking at them.

There was also a lot of artwork contributed by the young students of the primary school Academia Civitas. Other than the art and photographs, the show also offered for sale specially made items such as vinyl records, Tethys’ images of the moon, big and small photograph frames and prints.

According to Ms Aneela Shaikh of The Curated Plate, with whom Dawn Relief collaborated for the show, the artists even dropped their original prices to make the pieces more affordable for buyers, as all proceeds from the show were being used for flood relief in Sindh and Balochistan, a cause close to their hearts as well.

The writer is a member of staff
She tweets @HasanShazia

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 2nd, 2022