My parents tell me that I haven’t seen good art. I’m told that this is because I haven’t seen the Louvre, the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) and the Hermitage. Perhaps that’s also because they don’t share my fondness for either the European Art Nouveau poster or our very own Pakistani truck art; and the poetry painted into the bright floral patterns or tigers growling at the car which has had the misfortune of having had to drive behind one of these beautiful and gaudily painted black fuel fume churning machines!
And perhaps I really don’t know much about art. Growing up in Islamabad, my only exposure has been limited. Much of what I knew about art came from my visits to the Lahore Museum a very long time ago when there were over 200 paintings in one gallery and all one could remember were some paintings by Anna Molka Ahmed, Jameel Naqsh’s ‘woman and dove’ and the beautiful mural by Sadequain in the main gallery at the Museum. Much later in the 90s, my visits to the Tate, the National Portrait Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, brought out the shopaholic in me and I would came back from the Museums and galleries with dozens of prints, postcards and calendars!
Massacre of the Innocents
Imagine my surprise when a bright truck art painting was the first piece I encountered
Coming back to Islamabad – ah, that’s another story. In Islamabad, there was a time when privately owned galleries gave the city some exhibitions. The Nomad Art Gallery is one of these haunts. Set up in collaboration with Jamal Shah, Nomad was later run by Nageen Hayat, who has regularly held exhibitions of new emerging artists and invited people to enjoy the paintings and buy them. Interesting stuff but the scene was not happening. Many of us yearn for a place to go for a quiet hour with some impressive art around us, and one often wished that one of Islamabad’s public sector Universities had a Fine Arts department too.
But, imagine my surprise when a bright truck art painting was the first piece I encountered in the main hall leading to the permanent galleries at the PNCA, Islamabad last month.
That was in May, earlier this year when I went to see the ‘Massacre of the Innocents’ and an oddly named exhibition, ‘We are all mad here’. The Massacre exhibition used a title borrowed from the Baroque painter Guido Reni’s famous 17th century work and other artists such as Bruegel the Elder and his son who had depicted the myth about Herod’s slaughter of children in Bethlehem. This impressive exhibition also focused on a massacre too, homage to the dead on the shooting of children and teachers in the APS school last year. With exhibits from 80 artists, this was a collaboration of the Shakir Ali Museum and the Artists Association of Pakistan. There was a bloodstained school jacket and boot and a scene which showed a classroom under attack. Another image of two legs, swathed in white shroud, feet tied together just before the burial had the inscription ‘your sacrifice has brought the nation together’ was a bit unsettling to say the least. In the next gallery exhibits from ‘We are all mad here’ proved to be a contrast to the ones in the exhibition. With the use of non-traditional materials and mediums, videos, installations, performances and participation by the visitor ensured to imbibe movement and a little madness in the art by young people.
'We are proud that your sacrifice has brought the nation together'
Last week, when I went again, those exhibitions had been moved and I ventured into the galleries beyond the first halls. I found my favourite painting again, Intizar by Ustad Allah Bux. This is not one of Ustad Allah Bux’s regular features from the rural life in oil. This is a girl with a gauze-like dopatta on her head, eyes looking dreamily ahead. It reminded me of Three Girls, hanging at the Dehli National Gallery of Art, a painting of three chador clad women, by our Amrita Sher Gill. Both paintings are quite different – Gill conveys a sense of passivity in the three female figures and I like Gill’s bolder colours more but where all three of Gills women look down, Allah Bux’s waiting woman looks ahead, sadly, deep in thought or a dream.
Moving on, to the upper galleries, one can’t miss the PNCA’s largest collection – this is Sadequain’s art, some 200 impressive works, and quite a few on permanent display. There is an entire gallery of Sadequain’s murals, paintings, sketches, calligraphy and best known for his illustrations of ‘Rubaiyaat’ and of poetry by Ghalib, Faiz and Iqbal. This is a treat in many ways. But sadly, where PNCA fails to impress is on its collection of miniatures. Perhaps there may be hundreds, but barely 20 were on display. The walls have dull fingerprints and need a fresh lick of paint. One only finds a couple of Chughtai miniatures and an etching or two here. There were miniatures of the last Mughal King and his wife, some really beautiful ones of courtiers, hunting scenes, a rukhsati. So why don’t they build up their collection of 1000 art works, I asked Mussarat Naheed Imam, Director (Visual Arts). “Art has a price tag, especially good art and we have not had a budget for acquiring more paintings and building up our collection since 2007. Not having the crucial resources, we have been relying on donations now. So while we have been acquiring paintings, the situation is such that we cannot acquire really good art and or dictate, what we want, to a donor.”
An exhibit from Massacre of the Innocents
One would imagine that the management would be doing something about it? But it seems that the PNCA gallery which is attached to the Ministry of Information is being managed on an adhoc basis by junior bureaucrats who are assigned the gallery for short terms, 6 months or so. A Director had not been appointed for the last three years. The Restoration lab is empty with the only restorer at the Gallery had left for a position at the National College for Arts (NCA) in Lahore. “When the budget for the position was cut, we lost our in-house restorer. We then got a lot of offers of support from the embassies on this issue. We even had a French expert come and work with us for a while to restore some important pieces such as the Sadeqian mural. Now the Japan Embassy has offered to send us a restorer but unfortunately, this was not possible due to the security situation in the country”.
A courtyard at the PNCA, Islamabad
Where PNCA fails to impress is its collection of miniatures
Despite some very serious handicaps and obvious restrictions, the PNCA has been organising a number of good exhibitions, year after year. There have been calligraphy exhibitions, showcasing both the traditional and contemporary, from year to year. Another regular feature every year is the spring exhibition on paintings on the International Women’s Day, 8 March with women showcasing art by female artists from all over Pakistan. This year there were over 200 paintings exhibited here. March also proved to a busy month this year and the Francophonie Film Festival was also organized for 4 days from 18 to 21 March with movies from France, Belgium, Switzerland, Vietnam, Austria, Tunisia, Canada and the Czech Republic, Over the recent years, having felt the need to get children involved in art, summer art classes have been organized by schools teachers here and there is a waiting list for children to be enrolled here.
An exhibit from We Are All Mad Here
Intizar by Ustad Allah Bux
A number of partnerships exist with the different embassies based in Islamabad and there are MoUs with over 60 embassies for exchange programmes with different countries. So far, however, the Chinese team has been able to visit and work at the gallery as well as some exhibitions and performances held by Turkish and Iranian artists.
Leaving after an hour, however, I didn’t find the urge to look around for post cards. I would not have been able to either as the only gift shop, set up when Jamal shah had taken over the as the first Director General of PNCA ,has long closed down, so there was no chance that I could have bought any postcards here. There is no tea shop on the premises either – one couldn’t even sit down for a while.
