A group exhibition by Rabia Ajaz, Julius John and Saud Baloch titled Left, Right and Centre opened at Taseer Art Gallery here on Monday.
The works displayed included 23 art pieces of graphite on paper, acrylic on canvas, pen on paper and digital prints were exhibited.
Artist Rabia Ajaz said, “The Hostage Series depicts four people of different ages and genders, blindfolded with branded scarves, blind to the world, being held hostage to commercial brands.”
Ajaz said that the paintings in the Untitled Series pictured burka-clad women. These women, too, were trapped by commercial products, she said.
Artist Julius John said, “My work is dark. It chronicles the invisible markers in a city that divide the rich, the poor and the minorities.”
Curator Sanam Taseer said, “Rabia’s work talks of the balancing act between the spiritual and the material. Her subjects are comfortable with the commercialisation of religion. Julius’s work is part of an ongoing preoccupation with religious boundaries and how they translate to actual boundaries within a cityscape.”
She said the artists were using art to criticise the country’s response to modernity.
Rabia Ajaz got her bachelors from Beaconhouse National University in 2009 and a masters from Pratt Institute, New York. Julius John and Saud Baloch are NCA graduates.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 25th, 2013.