ISLAMABAD, May 16: “After working with print makers for almost twenty years, we at Nomad felt that it would be worth it to work with Iram and Aleem to put an exhibition together,” explained Nageen Hyatt, curator of Nomad Gallery.
And in this spirit, Iram Wani and Aleem Dad have put together a collection of some of their best works of print in the latest exhibition at the art gallery. For Aleem Dad, the work is more about the process rather than the outcome. “The process varies and as you start a print and develop it through each stage, it changes and takes a form of its own,” he explained.
“So even if the process is copied and repeated, the outcome will be unique each time and this makes each piece in the current exhibition the only one of its kind,” he added.
Dad developed serious interest in print making after he participated in a print workshop at Swansea, North Wales and enjoyed the separation from the turbulence of Pakistan that it afforded him. “My works are introspective and an effort to discover myself, away from the overtones of our overwhelming surroundings,” explained the polite and pleasant Dad.
Dad has “created a body of work which introspectively remains true to his previous concerns,” explained his artist statement.
A similarly quiet and jovial Iram agreed with Dad and explained that for her the very motions involved in print-making are a source of release for her energy. “Every thought and every movement is inter-connected,” and for Iram each muscular move to manually determine each centimetre of her print is part of the process. And so her prints are a lot more organic in nature. “I always go back to nature as the source of my inspiration. The objects and colors from my environment are the symbols of my thought process,” she explained.
While like Dad, introspection was also driving the content of Iram’s work, each one of her piece was connected with the other one to create a series. “My work is an autonomous activity. The ensuing images are a dialogue with the past, the present and the future,” explained Iram.