KARACHI: A group of philosophers believes man is the sum total of the choices that he makes. What choices? Those that he examines in retrospect. Therefore, man is what he does. Adeela Suleman is an artist who employs socio-politically charged work to probe such choices. She is known for her piercing examination of society and is one of those rare individuals whose activism has given strength to her art.

An exhibition of Adeela Suleman’s artworks titled The Kingdom of Retribution at the Canvas Art Gallery is another fine example of her creative urge with which she investigates society’s growth or regression.

What does the artist have to say about her current endeavor?

She says: “In Retribution, I navigate the timeless themes of judgment, redemption, and the troubled contours of the human condition, using as a major point of reference, Michelangelo’s magnificent altar piece at the Sistine Chapel, Vatican the Last Judgment. My carvings on wood attempt to rejuvenate the visceral and evocative images that Michelangelo so masterfully created in The Last Judgement, which stand as a highly relevant contemporary testament to the world’s ongoing struggles for moral justice.”

This is the first paragraph of the statement and we know that the point of reference that Adeela has come up with invokes some strong spiritual symbols. It means that the binary of body and soul in the context of time’s unstoppable movement is brought into focus, underscoring human beings’ predicament of making decisions — sometimes on their feet, sometimes while looking back.

At the same time, in a pretty intelligent way, in the piece called ‘The Book of Records’ (hand carved rose wood, wood staining, top coat with lacquer) she touches upon the subject of history and human contribution to it. Interestingly, for this writer, it springs to mind Shakespeare’s play Hamlet too, in which Prince Hamlet, after seeing his father’s ghost who was killed by his uncle, talks about what to keep in memory and what to erase:

Yea, from the table of my memory

I’ll wipe away all trivial, fond records,

All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,

That youth and observation copied there…

Adeela perceptively packs all these complex issues — choices, memory, judgment — into a series of striking exhibits such as ‘The Clarion Call’. It doesn’t take time for the viewer to see them unpack as well.

The exhibition will conclude on April 3.

Published in Dawn, March 30th, 2025