Expressing surprise

Artists Fatima Shakil's paintings and Sahar Musharraf's terracotta sculptures revealed feelings and emotions about their surroundings in a two person show titled "The Wow Factor" at Artchowk Gallery, Karachi. Together the artworks suppose to express surprise, wonder or pleasure for the viewers.
All the paintings by Fatima Shakil narrated a story about the society from various perspectives. Her works revolves around how human focus on feelings, especially towards their surrounding place and surrounding people. Her paintings talked about the hopelessness of people which they suffer at the hands of society in various forms and situations.
She symbolically used zebra for common man who experience discouragement and disappointment at the hands of authorities and pay heavy price of wrong doings of other people. Paintings titled "Dispersed Entities" and "Delusional Spaces" talked about the same issue. She wanted to bring positivism to the forefront of the minds as so many of us suffer from ill feelings that are a result of an unfocused mind. She expressed surprise faced by many people when they encounter the unbelievable in our society in her painting titled "Stuck in the Middle".
She promoted a dialogue about new behavioural choices that are inspiring our people and creating new form of society like media attention. In her painting titled "Watch me Not|" she effectively pointed out over exposure of certain issues and unnecessary over coverage of less important topics on media than relevant problems are discussed on these platforms. Having different settings, situations, and environments her paintings portrayed the society as a whole. The good and the bad stay side by side in a society and the life go on.
Through her work Sahar Musharraf tried to force us to look at the world in a positive way and be in a peaceful and serene state of being. She dreams for peace, equality and empowerment in a society where perspectives gets ignored to the monotonous daily routine of life and leading one to lose sight of what's important.
She seemed to find her true identity. Being an artist she used her creativity to communicate concepts about life, time, world, history, pleasure, gender, difference, identity and misery with the viewers through her works. Her round sculptures revealed the circle of life as the titles of her works showed such as "Beauty of Hexagon", "Natural Beauty" and "Seed of Life". Thus her work was about something more than merely rendering of geometric shapes and designs.
The sculptures though are circular like a globe but emerged in different schemes and colours of terracotta. These works were constructed with a greater thought about the role and representation of people in a composite culture which is not confined to one's immediate geography.
The artworks were mainly account of ideas, acts, values and aspirations which were mostly portrayed as emblem of beauty, spirituality, and peace beyond regional demarcations. All these bring forth the aspect of being human and about people's role, presence and contribution as an essential component of community. The composition of sculptures revealed a complexity that unveils people's link with a tradition, no matter if it is from east or west culture.