When complex rules and regulations applied rigidly by a person in his/her personal domain its adverse affects can easily be seen around him/her. This subject of though was discussed by artists in a two-person exhibition titled "Bureaucracies of Imagination" at Canvas Gallery, Karachi.
Both the artists Moonis Shah and Mahbub Jokhio narrated their personal opinion regarding Bureaucratic attitude of people around us. But their attitudes were shaped by the society the way it wanted people to behave and think. Moonis Shah's bold coloured series of five prints on canvas titled "When it rained, wind carried it to places unimaginable" showed a rest house, a detention centre, torture equipment, torture centre and a government post-man blurred by splashes of different colours presented the condition of a society under Bureaucratic thinking.
Due to such thinking people are suffering around the world. The communication gap, surveillance, migration, border disputes all together making common people's lives miserable. A video titled "Fascism in Our Everyday" was made from the pieces of old cinema and TV documentary videos to explain the topic more precisely. Mahbub Jokhio's charcoal on paper work reminds viewers their childhood's play with paper making paper boat, paper ball, paper mike, paper butterfly and paper flower which can be seen in his paintings titled "Titli", "Phool", Machhli", "Kashti", and "Dabba". All these origami works pointed towards a desire to build something constructive and useful.
But as the time passed by these pleasures in making something new and attractive fade away due to wishes of society or our elders who wanted us to be what they think good for us. Nobody bothered to ask our will and at the end we were also doing the same to our kids and the cycle continues. Personal opinion and desire lost between society and elder's ambition and hope. There was also a video titled "24 Frames per Second" to show the concept of Bureaucracies of Imagination.
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