Peshawar tragedy expressed in art

On December 16, 2014, terrorists attacked the classrooms of the Army Public School in Peshawar killing over 130 children.

Over 80 artists responded to a call from the Pakistan National Council of the Arts and the Shakir Ali Museum to express their feelings about the December tragedy. Hence almost 100 art images and installations are on display, arranged in collaboration with the Artists’ Association of Pakistan (Dawn, Islamabad, May 18, 2015).

The exhibition is called “Massacre of Innocents” with artwork depicting each of the artists’ feelings through evocative, sorrowful, dark, subtle, muted, or disturbing images. Paintings such as “Whispering Props” include a restaging of the furniture of the school classrooms, while large murals capture the destruction, pain or suffering. Both social and political comments are expressed.

The curators, Amna Pataudi with art critic Quddus Mirza, said that the tragedy was difficult for people to talk about, and that the paintings provided the means to express people’s pain, similar to the way poets, writers, and journalists have written about their feelings over the past months. It is often easier for people to express condemnation, agony, confusion, loss, and empathy through art. Art was therefore both expressive and cathartic.

The exhibition is at the National Art Gallery in Islamabad until May 31, 2015.

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