Calligrapher Ruheena Malik has immortalised her faith through her three-dimension carvings of the treasures of Islamic art. The winner of the Pride of Performance Award, Malik recently hosted an exhibition of calligraphy where she displayed over 50 art pieces. The exhibition was held at the Quaid-e-Azam House Museum on Fatima Jinnah Road.

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In the early months of 1943, Abdul Aziz Raiba began his association with the Sir JJ School of Art after being offered a scholarship by the dean Charles Gerard. He graduated with a Diploma in Fine Arts in 1946, and was appointed a Fellow to the painting department for a year in 1947. He returned to his alma mater in 1980 enrolling himself for an evening hobby course in Graphic Print Making at the Print-Making Studio while accompanying his senior who was seeking admission at the Faculty of Architecture. Seven decades later Raiba returns to the College with a retrospective that inquires into his practice, exploring his experimentations with medium, methods of research that inform the subject of his paintings and the unique approach towards exhibition making.

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There was wonder, excitement and expectancy among the people who crowded into the Amin Gulgee Gallery recently in Karachi. They were there to see the artist’s latest exhibition, a collection of bronze sculptures titled ‘Through the Looking Glass’. Distributing warm greetings and hugs all around, the artist, nothing if not a showman, was in his element while holding what appeared to be 50 conversations all at once.

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There is a certain quality to Husin Hourmain’s third solo offering, much like his manner of speech; matter-of-fact, positive, engaging. An artist deeply imbued in abstract expressionism, his canvases illustrating the Jawi alphabet are monumental in scale, exploding with sumptuous colour, multi-layered, vigorous (of swipes, smears, streaks) yet controlled painterly strokes; the mood frenzied-romantic.

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After Kitamura Yasutaka finished high school, he had to decide which path to follow — his options were either to pursue a career as an artist or to become a professional chef. Perhaps not surprisingly, Yasutaka enrolled at the Tokyo University of the Arts and later furthered his studies at the Yamanashi Prefectural Institute of Gemology and Jewelry Art. After all, an affinity to crafts and art has been running in his family for four generations, dating back to the late 19th century, and was something familiar to the Japanese artist from a young age.

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More than a millennium after rudimentary forms of the violin came to India from his ancestral land, Ibrahim Quraishi has lent another dimension to the aesthetics of the string instrument by featuring it in the country’s first biennale. At Pepper House, the artist of Uzbek-Yemeni descent, has hung tastefully from a tile-roof ceiling a long row of 30 white violins which has caught the fancy of visitors.

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With self-taught artist Arjumand Awan there is never a dull moment. Every year the artist raises the bar as he strives to experiment and portray something new. His latest exhibition Bus Tu, which continues to January 31st, at the Nomad Gallery proves his versatility yet again.

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It was not only the sculptures at the Amin Gulgee Gallery that stood tall and invited attention but their creator was also the larger-than-life artist who spoke of his work as it spoke of him.

Read More: Celebrating a Decade of Art