Artworks portray personal lives, social pressures.

LAHORE -- Social pressures and complexes, acceptability and self-discovery, emotions or just personal experiences at various stages of life formed the basis for most of the thesis projects of students of textile design from Kinnaird College for Women University (KCWU).

A 'degree show' of 23 graduates of BFA Textile Design from KCWU's fine arts department was inaugurated at Alhamra Art Gallery on Wednesday by Kinnaird College Principal Dr Rukhsana David. The opening day was attended by parents, relatives and friends of the graduates as well as a large number of art enthusiasts. The exhibition runs till Friday (tomorrow).

Using modern techniques, fusion of textures, a combination of conventional and non-conventional textile material, the students have created metaphoric, larger than life, evocative installations and art pieces.

Hiba Qadoos has expressed her 'rootlessness' or home-sickness that she experienced after moving to Pakistan from Saudi Arabia for studies. Through the life of a tree, and using the latching, hooking and quilling techniques, Hiba depicts her growth in three stages with wool, cotton thread and silk thread: experiencing social anxiety immediately after moving, feeling lost and being unable to make friends or communicate with anyone, and the current stage of getting better gradually.

Aymen Hassan highlights the impact of trauma through four stages of a mind of a neglected child. For her thesis based on childhood trauma and emotional neglect, she metaphorically represents untreated trauma with a honey bee that bugs a person while buzzing around. Aymen had incorporated conventional and non-conventional material like Styrofoam, polymer clay, knitting, knotting, crochet, weaving, to portray a calm state of mind, trauma setting in, malignance increasing and total destruction of a mind in four separate glass showcases.

Maira Gilani explores the concept of 'buying beauty' in this era of cosmetic surgeries and other treatments to achieve artificial, socially acceptable standards of beauty. She hasn't used much textile in her art display, but utilises plastic mannequin and doll heads to depict how many people are indulged in a race to look better than the rest, not settling in themselves. Instantly, she says, 'beauty' is achieved through makeup and if that doesn't satisfy a person they move to semi-permanent makeup and surgeries. 'Basically, we are always thinking about the problems with our appearance; these problems exist only in...