A group show titled ‘Illusion of Reality’ brought together diverse works by Sana Durrani, Ayesha Rumi and Minaa Haroon.
The exhibition opened at the Satrang Gallery on Tuesday and featured graduates of the Beaconhouse National University masters programme.
Satrang director Asma Rashid said: “I am so proud to see this exhibition at Satrang Gallery. When I saw the work of Sana, Ayesha and Minaa Haroon during their thesis exhibitions I was thoroughly impressed with the delicacy, innovativeness and execution of their artistic processes and designs, which has now culminated in ‘Illusion of Reality’.”
Zahra Khan, the curator of the show, said: “The exhibition showcases the work of three diverse artists. Although each artist is exploring space, the execution of the idea is dealt with differently.
The works in the gallery resemble small format, jewel-like miniature paintings, covering the gallery’s walls and inviting the viewer to step closer and gaze at the intimate pieces.”
Unusually, the artists used scientific techniques, mixing mediums to create light boxes, photographic prints and photosensitive stone slabs.
Ms Durrani’s work is based on her experience visiting her own abandoned house to see how a visual artist’s engagement with a personal space generates multiple transformative experiences for themselves.
“My intention is to promote an intuitive and spiritual understanding of a reality which encouraged me to question how spaces respond to humans and how humans respond to spaces,” she said.
Another featured artist, Ms Remi perceives the world and everything in it in a constant, yet dynamic, state of evolution.
“I approach visual arts as a set of experiments that test whether ideas such as authorship, nationality, borders, and democracy adequately describe today’s increasingly global and consumerist society. My hybrid works – often a unique mix of sculpture, photography, performance, painting and video – explore the physical and conceptual act of mark making and its survival through traces.”
She added: “Through my work I have tried to blur distinctions between interior and exterior, surface and structure, representation and abstraction. My endeavour of creating harmony between binary elements resulted in creating a dialogue between the ephemeral and eternal.”
For Ms Haroon, the relationship with urban spaces is long and complex and an integral part of our evolution as a being.
She said: “An architectural space holds the tangible and intangible layers of experiences and memories of the humans at various levels.
This massing of paper in these works creates intricate models of urban landscapes inspired by the architectural density of the different cities that I have visited earlier.”
Her work, made with handmade paper on paper and tea washes, consists of boxes that depict objects, for instance windows and doors, which result in a pulsating arrangement of intricate spaces looking like an abstract composition.
“The erect boxes of varying heights and leaving voids in the volumes create another level of complexity and are not read as individual buildings, as those are covered and hidden spaces in our surroundings. The variation of colour and texture depicts the light source of the inner spaces of the buildings and are inspired by the miniature paintings.”