Written by: Nimra Khan
Posted on: August 22, 2019 | 
| 中文
Jovita Alvares' display (photo credits to Humayun Memon)
The Alumni Show at the Indus Valey School of Art and Architecture (IVS) encapsulates 30 years of artistic discipline, and the academic journey of 25 of its batches. The Alumni Show, organized by the IVS Alumni Association and sponsored by JS Bank, returns after a five-year hiatus. It was curated by a team which featured Emaan Rana, Halima Sadia, Humayun Memon, Numair Abbasi, and Shahzaib Arif Shaikh, with Sameera Raja and Adeel Uz Zafar acting as external jury to assist in the artist selection process.
The works displayed turned the lens around, and brought focus on the artists themselves as individuals and professionals. Selected artists were invited to look within, and tell their own stories so as to give the audience an insight into their practice, their truths, their lessons. They shared their existential dilemmas, their growth and metamorphosis, their professional and personal journeys. It was interesting to see the diverse ways in which the artists had chosen to respond to the curatorial premise, excavating different aspects of their personal artistic journey.
Fahad Naveed, with one of the most interesting and layered concepts, contemplates the impact of the work he has been doing since his graduation. As a journalist, filmmaker, visual artist and critic, he questions whether the stories he has highlighted have resulted in change for those he speaks for, since there is a general apathy among the people.
He collects and frames torn pieces of newspapers in which the naan he has consumed was wrapped. It is the idea of breaking bread over someone else’s tragedies and accomplishments. He reflects this desensitization while he reads the stories he has covered over the years, crumpling them as if there were naans in them. The piece perfectly captures the existential questions we all face at one time or another: whether our work really matters, and whether our efforts can actually bring the change we hope to see in the world.
Babar Shaikh, another Communication Design graduate from ’99, and a renowned filmmaker and musician, looks back to his time at the IVS during the shift from hand drawn to digital media. This is a change the world is arguably still coming to terms with in the creative fields. It requires an unlearning and relearning of modes and methods, as well as shedding of certain work ethics in favor of new ones. With his interdisciplinary installation situated somewhere in between video and performance, he works with his hands, yet we see them through a digital medium. Shaikh both questions and renders irrelevant the need for art and its processes to be merely physical via this display.
Marvi Mazhar, an Architecture graduate, focuses on her role as a heritage activist. She presents an ode to the demolished heritage buildings of Karachi, and the ignorance of the citizens who allowed history to turn to rubble. The display showcases archival artifacts, preserving the memory of a demolished school. It represents an erased heritage, and becomes an imagined museum that serves almost as a memorial to the buried narratives within it.
Mazhar’s work is also a tribute to a city in a state of constant flux, but one which develops at the expense of the past. It is shedding the patina of the bygone days for the greed of progress. In this way, the work translates the curatorial note into architectural terms. It reflects the inevitable changes and transitions that the artist, and the city go through, and the need to hold on to elements of the past that add value to our present.
Other artists represented their personal journeys through their professional language. Rubab Paracha, another architecture graduate, talked about her journey around the world as she constantly moved between 5 cities and 11 homes over the last 10 years. The work is a cartographical study of her emotional connection to these various points in her journey. The cartographical elements in her work discard technical accuracy, and manipulate reality to correspond to her emotional response to these spaces.
Jovita Alvares, a Fine Art graduate, goes back to the roots of her thesis. She took to the habit of following stray dogs around her neighborhood, through which she took on the idea of the impermanence of time and space. But she also narrows it to a more personal study of her own pet dog, Bruno, who recently passed away, and whose bond with her was as strong as any human bond.
Her tête-bêche (double sided) book is an interesting take on storytelling, that provided two perspectives of the same events. They cannot be read at the same time, making them both true and unintelligible to each other. But they still exist side by side as one – a perfect encapsulation of a relationship with an animal.
“The Long and Short of it”, as the name of the show suggests, explores the broader implications of 17 practices, while also condensing them to reveal the personal narratives that drive them. It comprised of a diverse group of artists, ranging the Batch of 1994 up till 2018 from 4 different departments, who branched out into a variety of career paths and disciplines. The show gave us an interesting mix of experiences that encapsulate the collective journeys and achievements of a generation of artists.
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