Symbolism in art: ‘The artists’ work is painstaking and laborious’

An art exhibition by artists Adeela Shah and Ali Asad Naqvi opened at the Taseer Art Gallery on Monday and will continue till June 6.

Taseer said Naqvi’s work was painstaking and laborious. She said the circular hand movement apparent in the artwork was almost meditative, like the Sufi poetry it was based on.

Shah has 22 pieces on display, made using pen and ink, etching on copper plate, water colour, graphite, charcoal, conte, and ink.

Shah told The Express Tribune “My drawings are my companions. They are visual manifestations of conversations with my self. I am a mere dot, much like a particle of dust in the universe, but I do play a part in making the whole.”

Shah also pointed to the recurring symbols in her work: the heart, birds, clouds, and the sunflower. She said they represented both sorrow and joy. She said along with blood, the heart, pumped passion and desire. She said “An ongoing struggle between freedom and restraint shows the duality in me. The constant clash between two selves is at times a game between two opposing yet harmonious beings.”

Shah said the birds in her work represented freedom and flight, and clouds portrayed autonomy and obscurity. She said the sunflower faced the sun throughout its life, enveloping its ‘self’ in the company of the sun. Its life, however, ends faster than other flowers once detached from its roots. “In my drawings the vibrant yellow is replaced with a monochromatic black and white. For me, yellow represents attachment with the world, and the absence of yellow is a comment on detachment from the world.”

Naqvi has six pieces on display. He told The Express Tribune “My art pieces are inspired by Rumi’s Divan-i-Shams-Tabriz, Ghazal 390. The titles of my pieces are phrases from the ghazal, which I have tried to represent.”

Published in The Express Tribune, June 4^th, 2014.