Hazy dreams
Aasim Akhtar's recent drawings at Rohtas II were like characters in a finely woven plot where each individual is signifying the other and carrying multiple themes along the way to the final act
By Naeem Safi
But solemn is the silence
on the silvery haze
That drinks away their
voices in echoless repose,
And dreamily the evening has
stilled the haunted braes,
And dreamier the
gloaming grows.
The stanza from The Fairy Thorn by Samuel Ferguson best describes the overall mood of Aasim Akthar's "And dreamier, the gloaming grows", which is a series of his recent drawings that went on display at Rohtas II, in Lahore. The series uses the minimalist choice of materials -- 15 drawings framed in white, graphite on paper, with a couple of pastel works, and hung on white walls.
At first glance, some of the works look like a continuation of Marvin Bileck's etchings and engravings; not just for the choice of the title of the show but also for the choice of forms used, like the ones in the Heart to Heart, with which the show begins. However, it goes beyond that where the narrative begins with a metaphor from nature, and then goes on to engage metaphors of the nature. The varying tones of grey, and the choice of intimate instances -- personal, telluric, or the marriage of both -- is divulging the subconscious. It is nature that creates attraction between the two opposites and connects the organic forms of existence, or even the inorganic ones. The show is like a journey through the colourless mist of melancholy, where the images seem like reflections from a very lonely place. The place where subtle is part of the obvious, and obscure is rendering clarity.
Most of these drawings are like whispers, almost motionless, and embedded within them are the fine suggestions of the ineffable; while some are meandering through the moonlit landscapes of carnal desires, from a perspective that is slightly drifting towards the Other side, away from the land-of-the-sane-and-the-sure. A place where tall peaks of human passion are laden with tales that need to be told, and the walls of deep gorges are painted with shades of concupiscence. The interplays between the positives and the negatives, and the animate and the inanimate -- especially in the case of the five Bodyscapes -- are giving birth to the new and the more meaningful.
The Wind of Desire beautifully portrays the classic contest between the pull of desire and the vast abyss that is filled with myriad obstructions impeding the former. Along with that, the desire to break free from it, and glide over this chasm towards the ultimate bliss, intensifies this contest. The distorted torso with the bloated chest seems to be filled with the immense burden and pain that is precipitated by this conflict, as if desire is a deity and human flesh its ambrosias, struggling for survival yet defenceless and being sacrificed for a 'sacred' and inevitable cause of making the desire immortal.
In the Poppy Seed, poppy buds, flowers, and stems are rendered and composed in a manner in which they are dancing to the tune of life, depicting the never ending attraction between the pollen and the carpel, present in almost all living beings, in one form or the other, and a major thesis of life itself. The pale coloured petals of the blossoming flowers are the only objects that have used some hues in the entire body of works displayed in the show. Such a limited and careful application of colour, in this context, is apparently suggesting, or desiring, the feminine as a source for brining the colourfulness into the grand scheme of existence.
Apart from the individuality of each work, the discourse created by the titles in a particular order, and parallel to that the catharsis produced by the visuals in that order, further add on other meaningful layers to the set in totality; like characters in a finely woven plot where each individual is signifying the other while at the same time asserting its own identity, and carrying multiple themes along the way to the final act.
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