A recent exhibition at Gallery 6 in Islamabad, ‘Fractured Landscapes — Flourishing Spirits’, featured a solo show by the artist Abid Hasan. A graduate from the Karachi School of Art, Hasan is known for his use of chemically treated gold and silver leaf, creating mixed-media works with a luminous yet tactile impact.

His current body of work employs his familiar technique, adding a riot of colour to the signature gold leaf. While the majority of the work is abstract, we can pick out the recurring element of a rose, which “represents resilience and survival in the midst of this chaos,” explains Hasan. Indeed, this theme plays out across the whole show, which speaks to universal themes of grace and endurance in the face of adversity and destruction.

We’re immediately drawn to associations with the violence currently being done in Gaza, the ongoing horrors the Palestinians are faced with, and the strength of endurance they’ve shown over the years. Works such as Boundary of Freedom — 1 seem to reinforce this viewing, with the allusion to a wire fence, and the blue and white that we could easily interpret as a perpetrator’s flag.

But Hasan reminds us: “The themes of suffering, endurance, and beauty amidst destruction are universal and, while they may apply to Gaza, my work is a commentary on Pakistan’s fractured landscapes and the tensions we face internally.”

Themes of conflict and separation define the dramatic canvases that Abid Hasan creates

We can see in the titular Fractured Landscapes —Flourishing Spirits that, while the canvas feels ruptured, there is an undeniable hopefulness. The rose in full bloom is unhampered by the chaos of lines and colour surrounding it. In fact, we see that the rose itself extends out of the chaos — it embodies “a stubborn will to grow and thrive, even when the world is fractured around it.”

Hasan has taken inspiration from Robert Frost’s poem Mending Wall, which explores the alien nature of a wall and how nature seeks to tear it down, though we may build it up again year in, year out. “Good fences make good neighbours,” the character intones throughout the poem. But Hasan is rallying against the walls that separate — both physical and metaphorical.

In Divide and Bleed — 1, we feel that pain of separation. We’re reminded of all the walls in history that cut and broke and scarred. It took blood and sacrifice to tear them down. We’re reminded of all the walls that still remain and the work still to be done. And yet, we also recall the walls that stood to protect, that kept out the raging enemy, which kept in the warmth of the hearth. This dichotomy is played out on the canvases of Hasan’s work where, what in one instance can protect, can in the next lay you bare. What in one moment contains all the beauty of the rose, in the next becomes the prick of the thorn.

Hasan reflects that his work is “not tied to any one event but speaks to the endurance of life in challenging conditions.” His canvases explore the scarred landscape we all must navigate and, as we gaze upon them, we can hear the echo of Frost’s verse: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall…”

‘Fractured Landscapes — Flourishing Spirits’ was on display at Gallery 6, Islamabad from September 13-September 17, 2024

The writer is an Australian based in Pakistan. She is an avid enthusiast of contemporary Pakistani art and culture

Published in Dawn, EOS, November 10th, 2024