KARACHI: Milan Kundera’s line from his novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting that ‘the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting’ has become proverbial. But those who quote it, do so, by and large, in the political context. Memory has all sorts of relevance to our lives. And it all begins from the beginning: that is, the time that we spend growing up among members of family.

Like all other aspects of life, such memories have both shades — of grief and happiness. This is the crux of the idea of Razin Rubin’s exhibition of artworks titled Fading Echoes, which concluded at the Chawkandi Art Gallery on Thursday.

The medium that the artist has employed to highlight the subject is graphite and charcoal on archival paper. The black (and white) images and the shapes and contours of the objects drawn, easily set them in a time zone that’s from a bygone era. What’s striking is Rubin’s control over the medium which lends the kind of authenticity to the whole creative concept that only fine art can. To boot, within that subject matter, there’s an interesting interplay between animate and inanimate objects. If on the one hand, there are striking pictures of a ‘Bicycle’ and ‘The Woven Chair’, on the other, nature is brought into focus with exhibits such as ‘Man with the Tree’. And all of it is done within the familial framework.

Now to understand that framework, the artist’s opinion matters: “My work is a personal exploration of memory, family history and the transformative nature of time. I recreate photographs from my family archives and revert to the moments that have passed. I not only draw the people in the photos but also portray their stories and experiences that shaped our family.”

The essential phrase here is ‘the moments that have passed’. This is exactly what Rubin has successfully tried to recapture, which means, the artist doesn’t want, nay need, those moments to pass.

Published in Dawn, November 9th, 2024