Daily Times

Curated by Sanam Taseer, an exhibition at Taseer Art Gallery displayed the work of Raheem Baloch, a talented NCA graduate. It was amazingly intricate and presented very touching artwork on the lines of arts in politics. He is a sensitive artist, who has deep concerns for his surroundings; unveiling the untold stories in his artwork. He used dandelions, honey bees and flowers as metaphors for hope, nature and affection. He used oil on canvas to voice the pain of oppressed, silenced and unheard voices. His technique was unique with a lot of detail; using delicate miniature strokes. Raheem explained his childhood as growing up in the mountain ranges of Baluchistan and his strong connection with nature since the early years. The experience of losing his father at a very young age made him aware of the pain emerging out of separation from loved ones. This instilled empathy in him for those who had gone through the agony of separation from loved ones. He narrated how the free tribal life was portrayed by the dandelions and honey bees as characters symbolising requisition. Raheem’s admiration for honeybees wasn’t only due to their social nature but the attributes of communal living in a unified and civilised manner. The connection of honey bee with the flowers is not based on the manipulation of resources, quite unlike the capitalist hierarchal order. A pure relationship was portrayed between the dandelion flower and honey bees.

In a clan-like community, honey bees were said to share the blossoming of flowers with fellows. Through the changing colours of their eyes, honey bees express and share the sweetness of a flower. A family shares the same purity of relationship and the scars of separation cause bleeding and pain. But the pain is more inflicting when the separation is forced upon a family due to hegemonic order rather a disorder of society. The magnetic part of these paintings was the passionate amount of intricacy and aesthetical strokes of the artist.

Art and politics have a trail of connection through historical epochs, connectivity and their impression on the people

An artist can hardly remain unengaged from the social and political conditions of his times. Raheem’s work also depicts his concerns for his surroundings–the parallel politics and the unheard suppressed voices, which always get heard in the world of art and literature. Rahim’s work is also a depiction of vacuum and pain felt by those who suffer from the forced separation from their loved ones and go through an endless agony. His paintings express the hope from the recovery of pain from separation and the scars of oppression. He narrates the trajectory of missing persons and the constant pain he feels like a part of being a honey bee clan. The pain is consistent and yet the effort is there to work for a consolidated ending to it. The combination of arts in politics in Raheem’s work makes his work more of an art movement of his era. The social and political voices that are going unheard are causing a huge vibrating stir in a stagnant hegemonic world where power belongs to the few. The opinions are supposed to be first filtered and then approved. He has painted this pain and agony in beautifully skilful detailed work. In one of his painting, a veiled woman from Waziristan was holding a piece of paper with 25 lines drawn–the number of times she got raped in the times of civil war during Talibanisation. That single paper in her hand and the only visible part of her face–her eyes–shows a century-old practice of invasion over a woman’s body to prove the power and using rape as a weapon.

The strokes of his paintings are sketches of this proxy war and strike time, the polarization of ideas and suppression of parallel socio-political voices. In one of the paintings, a canvas was based on intricate miniature dandelion threads, a scar right in the heart of dandelion depicted bleeding. This bleeding scar represented the bloodshed due to a lack of tolerance and extremism. Human blood is shed in the name of religion, ethnicity and identity. The student who was brutally lynched in his campus or the rape victims, all are victims of the same doctrine and invasion of power over mind, body and soul. Despite the sensitivity of the topic that Raheem has chosen, he uses the lively presence of honeybees and the softness of dandelions to give a message of hope and restoration of faith in nature’s beauty. The psychological effect of this bloodshed, extremism and oppression injures our soul and mind. Politics cannot be separated either from arts or from the philosophical paradigms. Art and politics have a trail of connection through historical epochs, connectivity and their impression on the people. Art is shaped by the social conditions and treatment of a certain era. It tells a tale of its time and depicts not only the brutality but also the beauty of its times.

When we study international art movements like black movement or feminist art movement, our share of art movement will too be there in years to come. As art cannot be an isolated piece, the contextual web of its engagement with the surroundings makes it a piece, which is better than a thousand words.

The writer is a researcher and teaches Gender Studies