ISLAMABAD, April 12: In a quiet evening at Khaas Art Gallery, an almost empty gallery exhibited the works of Zunaira Sardar and Zeeshan Javed, two Lahori artists with very different styles.

Zunaira Sardar says she likes her challenges – and that in part decided why she chose collages as her dominant medium of art. “I am in love with texture and I work with my memories – so my art is a combination of textures and my memories,” explained the Lahori artist.

The medium of collage gives Sardar’s work an unnatural feel, we do not see the world around us in bits and pieces of different mediums combined together. But the fact that her collages invoke memories from this world connects each inorganic piece to the organic world around us.

In one of her pieces, Sardar uses silver thread to portray the wings of a pedestal fan prominent in a dark grey and black background. This represents her memories of the inescapable power outages that have become central to Pakistani existence.

Sardar’s glue and bonding works contain similarly minute thread work and a lot of attention to detail. In one piece, she depicts a marriage scene and titles it: ‘The Beginning’. The work does not threaten or scare away, but is interesting and invites examination and speculation.

Zeeshan Javed on the other hand, has taken a less nostalgic approach. His prints are mathematical and controlled. His colors stay within their borders and lines seem graphical. The concept behind his pieces tells a story of an angel who experiences life as a human and decided to give up his existence and become human. “Angels know no fear, no pain, no hunger, no touch and no free will. This is the trade. Being human is a privilege,” explained Javed.

Javed’s work took the form of prints with etchings in the background, all coming together to give a particularly anime like feel. The postures of his characters, the robotic limbs that seemed to float around his pieces, the symbolically filled etchings in the background all gave Javed’s work a singularly futuristic or science fiction like feel. The two artists’ work will be on display till April 23.