Written by: Muhammad Hamza
Posted on: July 26, 2024 | 
| 中文
Mariyam Rehman
In this week’s episode from the art world of Pakistan, VM Art Gallery exhibited their latest exhibition through art, ‘Always From The Heart’, hosted for a few select artists to work on the contemporary concept of love and hope.
In this residency, artists explored crafting installations from various material and techniques to ensure the revival and understanding of love and hope in current times. The artists gave an immersive experience to the visitors via wide range of styles of abstractions in installations, from shadow and light play to mosaics. The main agenda for this residency was to build a new narrative for love and hope, while the artists got to the core of their emotions, in order to produce and craft such concoctions to explain their respective journeys.
Asjad Madni, one of the four artists in the residency, has explored the light beyond darkness in ourselves; by creating an immersive space for the viewers to go through and experience. His work in sculpting concrete on wooden confined structures with small windows, showcased the light outside & the darkness that revolves around.
The window mosaic is a classic old school pattern that lets the light seep through just appropriately enough, and sink on the experiencing body, to engage themselves in an immersive emotion that deepens their transcendental view into the real world.
His another work, was to engage a human shadow on a blank canvas, which showcases that there is a void in everyone that lingers over in depth. His works are the epitome of showcasing hope within love and light, his works preserve the soul that is looking forward to light. Asjad's skill to play with light and shadow emanates emotional longing for life.
Asjad Madni
As Asjad quotes Jaun Elia:
اتنا خالی تھا اندروں میرا... کچھ دنوں تو خدا رہا مجھ میں
("My inner self was so empty that God stayed there for a few days.")
What he really meant by the couplet was that it’s been long since you thought of me, or else I would have never felt this lonely! Indeed you exist!
Asjad Madni
Another participant of the residency, Ahwar Nasir is a multidisciplinary artist, skilled in fabric and textured material to relay them into a structure. She has spoken about the nostalgic nomadic lifestyle she had all in the past. Love and hope for her starts from the small trinkets and swatches that she has collected over time, each piece has its own unique storyline, and once held together, it is a nostalgic experience.
Moving on to her installation, she has woven fabric swatches and along the way left a few pieces of trinkets in her structure of woven and stitched large scale pieces. They represent a unique flavour, jolting our brain in a sense of child-like love.
Ahwar Nasir
Ahwar explains her thoughts about visiting childhood home, where her grandmother's cherished piece of cloth has been carefully preserved over the years. Each thread in that fabric holds a story, waiting to be shared with visitors who come to listen and connect with her memories. In this place, love is woven into every memory, and hope resides in every corner. Ahwar's recollections the shared experiences of others, as childhood memories often do. Whether it's small keepsakes or fabric swatches, collecting these tokens of love from family and friends enriches our journey through life.
Ahwar Nasir
Mariyam Rehman has excelled in creating abstract figurative sculptures, drawing from her past experiences experimenting with various materials. These sculptures embody her concept of love and hope, utilizing textured wires and diverse materials to evoke a spectrum of emotions within the space. Her artwork portrays the journey of the human body, from its early stages to a profoundly distorted image representing individuals in their later years. Through themes of hope and love, Rehman explores how these emotions can either diminish or intensify over time, reflecting the complexities of human experience. The wired abstract figures are a tale of emotions and her sculptures have embodied a wide range of them, from love to its complex nature and then hope with some euphoria. Her installation has shown that it’s always a concoction of emotions and not a reflection of just one emotion. Mariyam has been able to capture the true essence of love and hope through different materials and techniques of bending and moulding structures to create such light play, while shadows play their own respective part in creating an imagery that is profound and powerful to look at.
Nazish Bano, a veteran in tapestry mosaic art with embellishments and other various materials to embody a two-dimensional structure to create a mesmerizing experience. Her words are an expression that she believes in change, asks to move and evolve through love and hope. In this exhibition, you shall see a Blue Morpho Butterfly, that she has worked on within this residency at the gallery. She has placed 26,196 hand-cut tesserae, 40 hand-made clay tiles, almost 2000 crystal beads, and various other components to create this blissful masterpiece of a mosaic. Her blue morpho butterfly is a little glimmer of hope for the visitors, as it showcases the journey of a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly, but only when it’s given warmth and love. Hope comes along the way.
Nazish Bano
It is inevitable to have an experience as of how Nazish has been able to create emotions through small tile cuttings and reflective mirror compositions for the viewers. The tapestry itself has its own language of hope for her. She takes time to evolve the characters and bring them to life for us, bringing hope and finding love through a little change in course. The only life that she adheres to, is to bring forth the goodness when it is overcoming chaos, and there’s beauty in composing the broken shards of tiles and mirrors, as seeking love and hope through her installation sculpture.
VM gallery has given us the experience of a lifetime through these immersive installations from all the artists that logged in for this residency. It has been a requirement in modern times to talk about love and hope. Some of us have been too far off from being even slightly aware of what little love can do for our surroundings. It is good to give hope in this world, and a reminder is enough. The only way we can do something about spreading love and hope is to talk and create. We don’t need to do a lot, but having the luxury of speaking our heart out is appreciated.
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