! Some of the artworks displayed at the exhibition.—White Star

KARACHI: From time immemorial, rain has played a tremendous role in the lives of living beings. It symbolises fertility and growth. It has been used by writers and poets as a gentle metaphor for romance, too. But then sometimes the anguish of waiting for the good times can turn a boon into a bane.

An exhibition of artworks by Risham Syed titled Chait Vasraand (What the Rain Remembers), which is underway at the Canvas Art Gallery, homes in on the topic with a difference: apart from the above-mentioned aspects, it touches upon the socio-political facet of the subject as well.

One of the interesting features of the show is the medium that the artist has used to express herself — mixed media on Chinese jacquard silk. The latter part of the media is something that she’s inherited.

However, it’s the message that Risham is trying to put across through all of that which gains immediate attention of the viewer: “Through What the Rain Remembers,I assemble fragments of memory, testimony and resilience. Imbued with the weight of history, these fragments bear witness to the human capacity for endurance… I invite viewers to confront the entangled threads of our existence, where the past and the present, and local and global, intersect.” [The statement is accompanied by a Punjabi poem by Najm Hosain Syed with its English translation.]

In recent years, a new word has come into being: glocal. It combines factors that are both local and global. The artist aims to achieve a similar goal by also factoring in ‘history’. This invariably leads to the conflicts or bloody disagreements that have dotted our history books.

Risham wants the viewer to investigate that through her work. So she comes up with ‘The Olive Tree’ series, summoning nature to enrich her endeavour both aesthetically and contextually. It works very well.

The show will conclude on Nov 28.

Published in Dawn, November 24th, 2024