EXHIBITION: TRANSIENT TALES.

As people grapple with an altered reality and the past year riddled with lockdowns and deaths, the group show Archival Memory curated by Malika Abbas at Gandhara Art helps to put things in perspective.

Its premise presents an apt opportunity to reflect on ways of living and to challenge accepted norms. Sensitively curated, the visuals exemplify diverse practices that blend seamlessly together. From concept to colour palette, the exhibition places the six individual artists' thinking in relation to the others, addressing relevant notions in a wholesome manner. Two words that resonate with most artists' work are 'reimagine' and 'transient'.

For Sadia Salim these words manifest in rituals that become inhabited moments of time which allowed her to re-evaluate, re-plan and to reimagine life as we know it - to reconstruct lived realities; an effort to rein back the race that is living in a metropolis city such as Karachi. Her work consists of found natural debris, be it flower buds, broken stalks or dead branches - gathered from all over the world, embodying her travels and history - dipped in clay, immortalised and housed in platters.

Doodh Ho Nahao Pooto Phalo (2021), Mariam Agha

Mahreen Zuberi's work stems from pre-pandemic 2019 days. Analysing the implication of land and ownership, her trajectory began when an Indian jet crossed and crashed into Pakistani territory. Visualised in the piece titled 'How to Unfold a Paper Plane', the event prompted her to analyse the nature of land, and how humans conjure the meaning of ownership.

Mariam Agha's practice addresses expectations of married women in relation to men in society; whether it is qualifying their roles as dutiful wives or bearing male offspring. Agha has attempted to reimagine and change the narrative behind borrowed age-old Urdu/Hindi phrases such as Doodh Ho Nahao Pooto Phalo and Jug Jug Jiyo that have infiltrated Pakistani culture. She pins the origin of these phrases in Hindu culture that tie a woman's identity to her marital status and are used indiscriminately to date. This is a point of contention for the artist. Agha has four pieces in the show, named after these phrases.

Fight or Flight V (2021), Anushka Rustomji

A group exhibition showcases a proposed shift from tradition, imagines new meanings and narratives

Anushka Rustomji's inspiration comes from hybrid monumental structures found in Eastern Mesopotamia, areas that constitute present day Iran, Iraq and Syria. Her concerns...