ART FACTS: Unspoken words

Inspired by Mughal era both artists Atif Khan and Asif Ahmed presented different perspectives of our society through their works in a two-person exhibition titled "Silent Conversation" at Art Chowk Gallery, Karachi. Just like unspoken words the works of these artists speaks a lot with colours and images and the viewers have to understand those words using their conscience.
A garden is a symbol of peaceful place where one forgets about the tensions of life and enjoys nature. But the current works of Atif Khan depicted the chaotic state of our society through images of a garden.
The gardens were imaginary with a touch of reality. He depicted that although the garden was there but the people were messing it and thus they have taken its peacefulness and tranquillity, which was the core of a garden.
He has created various styles of gardens. Each of the gardens has its unique view, design, structure and formation having lush green clusters of trees, blooming flowers and a lake.
Keeping in mind the historical gardens he played with imagination to create interesting situations and designs. His works captured the colourful world of his dreams. He translated his thoughts and experiences in his work using archival inkjet print on Hahnemühle paper.
His images resembled the traditional cultural Mughal period gardens as our ruling class show their royal attitudes towards common people. Such attitudes were damaging the relation of the ruling class with the laymen and as a result society suffers.
His works depicted a series of spectacular gardens having birds and flowers while other has lush green trees giving it a look of a forest with an open sky.
Atif merged his imaginative gardens with the real gardens of Mughal era while talking to the viewer through symbolic figures and forms. His landscapes seemed to be the coexistence of real and surreal worlds.
The colourful paintings having multi-coloured fish and birds created a harmonic atmosphere that also engulf the viewers imagination. As we know the birds are symbols of freedom and fish as the continuation of life. Therefore, he wanted to convey that our life needs freedom from the unseen shackles of our society.
The colourful birds and fish seemed to be moving in a circle and this circular movement denote the circular movement of planets around the Sun in our solar system. Just like that our citizens move around our leading personalities but achieve nothing worthy to match their efforts.
"To construct my compositions on the basis of my own storyline, I work with sections of existing or found images created by others. Mostly, I borrow these fractions of images from my surroundings: a decorative element of a local bus/truck or a segment of a miniature painting printed in an art history book."
"I do a kind of recycling of images, extensively incorporating found images in my work but keeping my compositions very much my own. This subverts the original contextual meanings of the existing images and suggest new messages to the viewer," Atif Khan said in a statement.
Asif Ahmed revisited our historical Mughal era through his gouache on wasli series titled "End of an Era". He used images of Mughal emperors, and animals like lion and elephant to symbolise that era's battles and power.
The colourful clothes of emperors and British mercenary in their bright red uniform against plain grey background depicted a story of bravery and success on both sides.
He symbolically used cupids, pieces of cheese and blood red dots to describe the fall of Mughal Empire. The sick and feeble Mughal emperors of that time were unable to fight and protect their reign.
Various events that occurred during that period were discussed in his works through coloured and grey images. The red colour was used for blood and ochre for dust as the figures of different Mughal emperors were soaked in these two colours to symbolise there role during that period.
Through his works Asif wanted to link our current time period with that era only characters are changed but their role seemed to be the same as in those days.
"Miniature art itself is the subject of discussion in my work. Making of detailed drawings and miniatures takes a view of history in the present time. Historical symbolism and figures have been a central theme of my surfaces and connections between the images are a means of questioning the current position of traditional art and iconography. I borrow imagery from the pages of famous traditional schools and transform them by juxtaposing, overlapping and rearranging to construct new narratives."
"I largely use traditional miniature techniques in small or large scale, developing the work gradually and invoking new contexts to articulate contemporary issues of traditional art in the modern world," Asif Ahmed said in a statement.
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