erhaps it was a coincidence. Three recent exhibitions at the White Wall Gallery, Lahore, had zoological references in some way or the other. The show before the current exhibition presented pictures of birds and animals, and the exhibition prior to that, consisted of man-bird hybrids. The current solo show comprises a large number of images (etchings and dry points) from the animal kingdom.

Five human figures are also displayed at Musawir Shabbir’s one-person exhibition, All My Faces Stared Back at Me (September 6-27). However, in Shabbir’s prints the demarcation of human and animal is of no importance or consequence. Through his sensitive and delicate scratches, he delineates creatures that lie outside the definition of man and bird or animal. For a person familiar with the artist, these visuals could be Musawir’s self-portraits, some direct, others remote representations.

This is not an odd reading. Irrespective of whether it includes a likeness of its maker, every image produced by an artist is essentially a self-portrait. Vincent van Gogh is a perfect example in this regard. In just over a decade of art making, he painted his face over and over. Some of the images stand out for capturing and conveying his inner turmoil, tumult and chaos that eventually led him to insanity and asylum. Van Gogh also created landscapes, figures, still-lifes and interior spaces. Each of the canvases reveals the same level of anxiety and intensity (through his hurried, frenzied and energetic brushstrokes).

All human figures in Musawir Shabbir’s etchings resemble his thin, lanky and flexible physique. Each depicts a solitary man placed on a blank background. Intriguingly, his attire (trousers) is invisible; a crisp line indicates the contour and posture of the body. This scheme of delineating the human frame, minus-clothes, is akin to the way birds and animals are drawn, bare – just as these creatures are found in nature.

Along with this unifying clue, the sole presence of each species (whether human or other being) on a single piece of paper, obliquely suggests the existential conditions a human encounters knowingly, and other creatures by instinct. Although animals and birds are born of parents and till a certain stage stay with their siblings, they soon grow independent; even estranged. If they later come cross their blood relations there is no registration, recollection or attraction. Their coupling too is similar so that often there is no long-term or long-distance marital bond.

Today a modern individual, too, is an isolated being. People find themselves alone even when they are amid a horde. Like animals that exist in the moment an entire lifecycle of repeated functions, many humans, too, survive in the present and in perpetual recurrence. Once we leave our families and hometowns to reside amid strangers we are not familiar with our neighbours’ names, lives and histories; or of those we travel with in a public transport, or work with in a factory, or share a table with at an eatery. This situation surrounds the modern human kind. In many instances, it is unbreakable and unbearable.

The human is depicted in subdued, subtle and soft action, the non-human is static. The artist realises that the etched line is suitable for mapping the outline of human skin, but to describe the textures of other beings dry point with its burr and roughness is a more appropriate vocabulary.

An invisible shield appears to be stretching between a living entity and others of the same species. The no-man’s land has a Kafkaesque atmosphere. Those reading his works of fiction such asThe Trial and The Castle encounter an environment of ever-present fear, fatalism and futility. The narrative about prime protagonists (the surveyor or Josef K) and their relationship with surroundings is primarily one of helplessness and hopelessness that overpowers the rest (plot, setting, characters). Once engaged with a work of Franz Kafka, one does not distinctly recognise various characters; but the author, disguised in his fictional figures and situations.

To some extent, Shabbir’s prints evoke a similar feeling, creating a zone of alienation. A young man, resting on his side or his back with arms stretched and a hand on his face, is closely related to small birds balanced or lying on the ground; a lonely, attentive or contorted dog; a lion amid an unidentifiable backdrop. In comparison, birds and animals seem more expressive, intense and memorable than the man in varying postures.

This difference could be rooted in formal, technical, conceptual and personal reasons. Let’s examine the bare torso of a young man and the feathers of a bird, a dog’s fur or a tiger’s coat. For a visual artist using the minimal language of printmaking, drawing the upper part, arms and feet of a human body does not offer more pictorial possibilities than what is accomplished with the textures of other creatures.

Shabbir explores his chosen technique for two types of imagery: humans in line etching; and birds/ animals in dry point. The human is depicted in a subdued, subtle and soft action, the non-human is static. The artist realises that the etched line is suitable for mapping the outline of human skin, but to describe the textures of other beings dry point with its burr and roughness is a more appropriate vocabulary. In any case, the male figure is spotted, but small sparrows, African grey parrots, budgerigar (locally known as Australian parrots), starlings (songbirds, called maina in Urdu), dogs and a lion do not have their individual or unique identities. This reminds one of Jose Ortega Y Gasset’s observation about a work of art being the view of a garden through a window. If a viewer concentrates on the sky and the vegetation, the image in its aesthetic sense disappears. If the visual material is present in greater than nameable detail of the subject matter, what spectators see is “a fiction,” by “adjusting their perceptive apparatus to the pane and the transparency that is the work of art.”

Shabbir aims for this level of art by exploring and elevating his pictorial idiom. Birds and animals are rendered in dry point; hence the lines are loaded with energy, swiftness and blurriness that one associates with these creatures. If he reproduces intricate details of feathers, fur, coat and spots, demonstrating his superb skill; at places he leaves the body of animals and birds incomplete. This is an artistic device that makes us believe in the reality of these species that is never stiff or static.

Musawir Shabbir manipulates the technique with such sophistication that a spectator enjoys the presence and pleasure of images and forgets the maker’s background of a printmaker. Since Shabbir’s domesticated technique travels back to the times of prehistoric art, one can speculate that in the beginning there was technique, and the technique was with the artist, and the technique was the artist.

The writer is an art critic, curator and a professor at the School of Visual Arts and Design, Beaconhouse National University, Lahore).