Thar: a dreamlike reality
LAHORE: Ali Abbas’s art exhibition titled “Dusty Wind” on its second say at Ejaz Art Gallery was visited by few. Ali Abbas’s mesmerizing work on the tribes of Thar Desert quietly and steadily maneuvered its way into the viewers’ mind, and resided.
Seemingly, the only human faces belonged to the characters in each of his paintings. In fact every one of his paintings, (water colour on paper) comprised of people. Sometimes, a solitary woman sitting on a charpoy staring into the distance registered her existence onto the paper and sometimes young girls giggling at a private joke lounged together.
Abbas’s work borders between impressionism and realism. Painted to perfection the, Abbas’s photographic strokes blended with just the right amount of surrealism made the painting look a dreamlike reality.
Images showed life in the rural Sindh, the desert of Tharparkar district, featuring people from the Kohli and Jogi tribes, besides many others.
“I tried to absorb the atmosphere of Thar and its social environment and have made an attempt to imitate it on the canvas” said Abbas.
Abbas said it were the women whom he has focused on. Women in their nomadic lives, looking after chores and children, are the ones who act as the anchor and the pivot to their families. “This is to some extent their total existence,” writes Abbas in his pamphlet for the exhibition.
The extent to which Abbas has absorbed the atmosphere is incredible. The detail with which he has captured every expression is a wonder. Even an obscure wrinkle in the women’s clothes is a marvel to look at. Women’s eyes speak through the paintings.
The paintings portray typical Thar people; dark skinned, thin and loaded with metal jewelry. In the sandy neutral desert background, Abbas painted the people’s clothes vivid, honouring them with restrained streaks of red, blue, green and yellow, reflecting their homely existence in the desert.
Intelligently shaded faces are in hue with the background, they are alight, not subdued and very much alive.
Abbas paints the desert in background as huge, oval, circular swishes surrounding the people in a halo like way showing its immense vastness.
There were often babies seen in many of the pictures, on the laps of the women. In many paintings, splashed with earthly streaks, there was a sickle lying at their feet, signifying the work that most Sindhi families do in the fields.
Abbas reflected the social lives of poverty stricken Thari’s who are bound to change houses as the river changes its course from time to time.
