Satrang Art Gallery – Left A Mark

‘Left a Mark’, a group show of some recent work by renowned artists including Amean J, Faizan Naveed, Humayun Memon, Madyha Leghari and Sana Durrani opened at Satrang Art Gallery,  on May 26, 2021.

Like all other facets of life, art too went through a phase of existential panic in wake of the pandemic. Galleries struggled to stay afloat and art sales dwindled. Exhibitions were few and far between and most of the activity was either virtual or just plain non-existent. Now that the country is hopefully emerging from the third wave of the pandemic, thankfully less scathed than so many others, ‘Left a Mark’ is a good omen for the Capital’s art scene.

Satrang Art Gallery has been at the forefront of providing a platform for art promotion in the heart of Islamabad with a mission to support and promote arts and artisans, particularly young contemporary artists. Full marks to ‘Left a Mark’ curator Zahra Khan for taking the brave and timely initiative of revising the exhibition culture; sure to help bring back a sense of normalcy to the life of art aficionados of Islamabad.

Faizan Naveed’s ‘pieces at the exhibition are UV prints on glass and perhaps capture the mood of the exhibition the best; black and white photographs of landscapes with superimposed triangles in colors ranging from red or yellow. His ‘O look, a triangle (VII)’ makes it to be the key visual for the exhibition. A solitary yet large mansion from a distance nestled between mountains with a rosy triangle traced over it brings an almost child-like fascination with something extraordinary that has been around forever but realized unexpectedly. Faizan is a Lahore-based visual artist and his work has been exhibited in Pakistan as well as internationally, for group and solo exhibitions, including biennales and festivals. Faizan’s constant study of time and space is visible through his work and his experimentation with technology culture, music, light, and color continue.

Humayun Memon, who has shown his work in multiple group shows in Pakistan, was shortlisted to be a resident artist in Picture Berlin’s summer programme in 2014. He was also invited as a participating artist in Canvas Gallery / Pioneer residency in 2019. In addition, Humayun Memon has curated shows in Karachi and Lahore and was one of the Assistant Curators for the first Karachi Biennale 2017. His digital print ‘The Kick’ is a canid, almost amusing take on life as two images are juxtaposed alongside each other.

Madyha Leghari is a visual artist, writer and educator based in Lahore. She has experimented with dimensions, spaces and everyday ordinary objects as life scuffles to find new meanings in her surroundings. As she herself states, ‘Silence is my mother tongue’, Madyha’s images define a language of their own. Her “Scum on Earth’ on display at the exhibition is a composition of static elements yet conveys a movement frozen in timelessness. Madyha has been exhibited in different galleries both nationally and internationally including Lahore Art council, Lahore; Satrang Gallery, Islamabad; and Studio Seven, Dubai.

Amean J’s grey photography is known to invoke the silence of the universe as more meaningful than what an ordinary photograph is ever able to convey. Amean has published 4 books and his work has been featured in several other titles and publications. With several exhibitions to his credit, his work is in private collections as well as installed in various institutions. Amean’s ‘6 frames of mind’ at the exhibition is a UV print on Winsor and Newton 185 gsm. Amean lectures on film theory and conducts filmmaking and photography workshops at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture and the haunting motion of grey clouds on an overcast sky make a poignant statement from Ameen at the exhibition.

Sana Durrani’s ‘Preserving the preserved (V)’, mixed media on archival print, demonstrates her interest in spaces and how spaces intuitively react to human interventions and vice versa. Her engagement with familiar personal spaces generates multiple transformative experiences for each spectator depending on his or her own life experiences.

Interestingly, art and creativity are largely a solitary pursuit and artists are or should theoretically speaking, mostly oblivious of any care for how their art will be perceived by the rest of the world. As the term ‘social distancing’ found a new meaning in the dictionary, ‘Left A Mark’ is an interesting expression of how the creative minds of these five gifted artists processed the recent transfiguration of the world around us all. The mediums are novel and innovative. The palette is retrained. The subjects of the pieces on display are more personal and incidental than ever yet portray a deeper appreciation of life as we have known it but often unseen. Pandemic has certainly left a few marks on life that will be hard to ignore.