In a luminous fusion of youth, memory, and imagination, the art exhibition “Souch say Saqafat tak” has unfurled its wings at the Islamabad Art Gallery in F-9 Park, bringing together the first public showings of fresh graduates from art schools across Pakistan.
Art exhibition “Souch say Saqafat tak” blooms in Islamabad with fresh voices of Pakistani art
ISLAMABAD, Apr 07 (APP):In a luminous fusion of youth, memory, and imagination, the art exhibition “Souch say Saqafat tak” has unfurled its wings at the Islamabad Art Gallery in F-9 Park, bringing together the first public showings of fresh graduates from art schools across Pakistan.
The exhibition, a collaborative venture between Islamabad Art Gallery and Khyal Art Space, opened on 6th April 2026 and will waltz through the entire month of April, inviting viewers into a delicate tapestry of dreams, dissent, and desire stitched in colour, line, and symbol.
The crisp, sunlit walls of the gallery now breathe with the pulse of untested yet deeply felt creative journeys, as the works of these young artists ripple outward like ink spilled on the fabric of the nation’s cultural conscience.
The show is curated by Raheel Arshad, whose vision wove the disparate threads of emerging voices into a single, shimmering narrative of identity and belonging.
The gallery’s director, Jamal Shah, stood among the candles of creativity, underscoring the exhibition’s role as a bridge between the innocence of artistic training and the responsibility of cultural citizenship.
Alongside him, the gallery’s curators Amna Shah and Faiza Ayub moved through the viewers like quiet conductors, guiding attention to subtleties often missed in the first glance: a brushstroke that trembles with doubt, a collage that whispers forgotten histories, or a neon lit installation that grins at the silence of tradition.
The occasion was graced by chief guest Duraid Qureshi, CEO of the HUM TV network, whose presence added a cinematic sheen to the evening, as if the stories painted on canvas could slip into script and find a second life on screen.
The evening’s guest of honour, Aqeel Solangi, a celebrated artist whose own works dance between figuration, satire, and surrealism, stood as a gentle elder, watching the inheritance of his generation unfold in younger hands.
His eyes, familiar with the weight of the brush and the burden of representation, seemed to rest approvingly on pieces that dared to question, to mourn, and to celebrate in equal measure.
Among the distinguished guests were the popular drama writer Irfan Ahmed Urfi, whose words have sculpted households, and the celebrated photographer Mobeen Ansari, whose lens has captured the quiet courage of ordinary faces.
Their presence turned the gallery into a rare confluence of script, image, and pigment, where storytelling spilled out of every frame and every wall.
The works on display shimmer with a raw, restless energy, as if the artists have plucked inspiration from the nerves of the city and the rhythm of the soil.
Portraits blur into abstractions, heritage patterns dissolve into digital glitches, and calligraphy melts into graffiti, each piece a quiet rebellion against the demand for easy answers.
Some canvases hum with the rage of inequality, others whisper the tenderness of personal memory, while a few flirt with the absurdity of contemporary life, turning slogans into jest and icons into irony.
The exhibition feels less like a static display and more like a living conversation across studios, cities, and generations ,Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar, and beyond united by a single hunger to speak, to see, and to be seen.
Director Jamal Shah described “Souch say Saqafat tak” as a symbolic passage from souch as the intimate, private world of thought and to saqafat, the broader, shared realm of culture.
Through this bridge, he said, the gallery seeks to nurture not only talent but also conscience, encouraging young artists to carry the weight of their society’s stories without losing their own voice.
Raheel Arshad, the curator, spoke of the show as a “palette of beginnings,” where mistakes are not erased but celebrated as part of the creative process.
He highlighted the works, though born from different schools and regions, share a common thread: the will to translate inner turmoil, joy, and confusion into visual language that can be felt more than explained.
The evening’s atmosphere floated somewhere between reverence and festivity, as visitors moved from one piece to another, halting at thresholds of meaning, discovering new symbols where they once saw only colour.
Some viewers stood in meditative silence, others leaned in close as if eavesdropping on the artist’s private diary, while a few laughed at the satirical jabs embedded in the corners of the works.
The gallery, usually a quiet sanctuary, pulsed with the energy of a crowded café of ideas, where no one spoke too loudly yet everything seemed to hum.
The exhibition “Souch say Saqafat tak” remains open throughout April 2026, offering a month long invitation to wander through the fragrant gardens of imagination where the future of Pakistani art is being quietly, boldly, painted.
