Exhibition at Storia Art Gallery: A conversation of memoirs

Hassan Babar

It was Rabindranath Tagore, who beautifully negate the oddness and pessimistic erudition about clouds with his quote “Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add colour to my sunset sky.”

Clouds in particular, always have strong metaphysical connections, depending on the milieu. They imply various forms, from emblems of gloominess and calamity, to something that can mesmerize one’s imagination. Clouds in the sky enormously look like thoughts of our minds and when you start concentrating on your thoughts, they start giving meanings to our sensitivity. At this certain point the evolution starts, the process of creativity ignites and art started to develop narratives.

Here we are going to present the work of two feminist art practitioners/ professionals memoir their thoughts and compelled it through surrealistic clouds. Their narrative of evolution evolved around the brightened empty backgrounds covered with abstract speculative images of nature. As a part of nature, they strapped the reality of the world and tried to create a notion of colourful surreal dreams having strong meanings with non-objective forms.

Shumaila Islam displayed spontaneous composition with sophisticated colour pallet in her own unique style that is completely based on her memory and imagination. She particularly emphasised on self with meta-conscious universals, through splattered clouds and giving an optical experience in surrealistic frames. There is a certain holiness in her painted clouds, which unrevealed the serenity of her thoughts. Shumaila entwined together with the same notion of holiness and purity, which lead her to experience the mysticism. Fluorescent Colours of clouds in her painting reflects the softer moments and absorption quality of her life like mystics who just absorbs all the negativity from their surroundings and reflect back the light of wisdom. Her painting style cheered the modern approach towards colour, composition and light, in new genre of Pakistani art. As a novice artists Shumaila will alleys her path towards self-recognition.

On the other hand, Laraib took sky and clouds as a constant variable to show the connection with time and place where form and colours are varying. Her painting shows metamorphic connections of time, which not only resonates her memories and travelling from place to place but also echoes the matchless frames that could be earned by seeing nature with half-ajar eyes and by feeling her within an open heart