The Puppet Theatre run by Lahore Arts Council at Alhamra will resume after three months from Oct 28. The Puppet Theatre for children, a regular activity at Alhamra for long, entrains children with various forms and shapes of puppets.

The theatre had been non-functional for the last three months owing to its restoration and renovation. Now, the council would start presenting traditional as well as contemporary puppetry through string puppets.

The council is also going to hold a three-day Folk Music Festival featuring singers from across Punjab as well as Lahore. “The basic purpose of organising a folk festival is to revive the folk music tradition,” Arts and Culture Director Zulfiqar Ali Zulfi told Dawn.

He said that there was a dire need to revive folk music and the council would introduce emerging folk singers from all over Punjab besides engaging professionals to perform at the festival. The emerging singers would be able to perform on a professional platform that would help them hone their skill.

Mr Zulfi further said that Mass Foundation Theatre in collaboration with Lahore Arts Council is also staging a play, titled Sipahi Maqbool Hussain, from Oct 27 to Nov 4. The play was being staged on the directives of the information and culture minister. It has been written by Asghar Nadeem Syed and the cast would include Rashid Mehmood, Sarfraz Ansari, Azra Aftab and Tanveer Shah.

Mass Foundation Theatre founder and director of the play, Amir Nawaz, told Dawn that they would soon organise a festival at Alhamra based on short stories written by literary icons such as Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi and Munshi Premchand.

An exhibition of mix media artworks, titled Looking Back to Look Within, by six artists concluded on Friday at Alhamra Art Gallery.

The curator, Ozma Bhatti, while explaining the basic theme, said: “Through this set of artworks on display at the exhibition the artists want to rekindle their past by juxtaposing prevalent circumstances of their lives following contemporary trends.”

The exhibition that opened on Tuesday, in fact, was connected between the past and present while one is being nostalgic, as the title of the exhibition suggests, she added.

One of the artists, Faiza Bhatti, shed light on her works -- a video installation and two paintings, saying: “My work is mostly based on lunar eclipse experiences related to social behaviour and the belief about a lunar eclipse and pregnant women. My work is autobiographical, concentrating on my own self; by emphasising the lunar eclipse.”

Another participant, Sana Durrani, said her works were all about abundant places; it was basically a study of places. The psychological impact of abundant places played an important role in her works. The inspiration to such places was driven from her ancestral home. How the artist responds to such places was the theme of her works.

Farrukh Adnan’s works were based on his childhood memories. The place, Tulamba, located near Khanewal also happened to be an excavation site. The artist through his work remembered those beads, coins and ruins where he used to loiter around in his childhood.

“The exhibition is based around the theme of linking the past with the present and exploring ourselves through the lense of the past. The fast moving time containing within it seemingly endless changes has left humans with a sense of curiousness and a desire to find a foothold for connecting us with this flow of history and our place in it -- for what is present today will tomorrow be the past and what we are today defines what we will be tomorrow,” said Ozma Bhatti in her curatorial note. “The ever-present question since the dawn of humankind -- who am I and why am I here -- has haunted and tantalised countless generations since time immemorial and the artists who form part of this exhibition also share this desire to locate themselves within the ambit of history and unravel the essence of who they are.”

The exhibition brought together works of emerging artists Faiza Bhatti, Farrukh Adnan, Ghulam Hussain, Maham Suhail, Ozma Bhatti and Sana Durrani.

Published in Dawn, October 21st, 2018