lato, the influential Greek philosopher from the 5th Century BCE, proposed that the universe was made up of five fundamental types of matter: earth, air, fire, water and the cosmos. Each element was associated with a specific geometric shape, known as a platonic solid. For the element Earth, Plato envisioned the cube as its defining shape. Recent advancements in technology and scientific understanding might have led to a shift away from Plato’s conjecture, with the focus now turning towards atom as the fundamental building block of the universe. However, not all scientists and researchers have mitigated Plato’s theory. Experts have deployed mathematical, geological and physical principles to support the idea that the average shape of rocks, which are in fact the building blocks of Earth, aligns with a cube.

The recent exhibition, titled Back to Basics, displayed at Articulate Studios, draws its inspiration from the concept of a cube, positing that all ideas, whether tangible or intangible, are composed of indivisible units at the smallest scale.

The exhibition is a part of the Lahore Biennale as a collateral event and will continue till November 4. Articulate Studios is a project of Beaconhouse National University’s faculty member Eisha Liaqat. It is known to host artist residencies and exhibitions.

Back to Basics is curated by Quddus Mirza. It gathers nine participants, each representing an edge of the cube, and one connecting them with its diverging point from the centre. Each artist displays an incorporeal connection with the conceptualisation of the element of the simple geometric form. Pakistani-British artist Kishwar Kiani hopes to draw order from sheer chaos through her prickly metal sculpture, in a cubic form.

Whereas chaos contained within the centre of the box-shaped structure is irregular, the order emerging or rather stemming from it takes on a certain uniformity. Kiani’s installation highlights her struggles growing up in a conservative environment. It suggests that thriving in restrictions may orient and discipline us but it might also make us shrewd.

Haris Qayum’s sound installation reverberates the beating of his own heart, echoing in a small enclosed area illuminated by not only the single crepuscular ray that seeps from a small hole punctured in the ceiling but also the luminosity of the white paint on the walls and the bleached gravel beneath the feet. The serene setting alludes to themes of meditation and seclusion.

In contrast, Fatima Haider explores the materiality of dark mediums and the abscission of perspective in a de-contextualised abstract piece to question the preconceived visual language one obtains in professional and academic art training.

Anila Quyum Agha fashions four blocks of mixed media fibre drawings stitched in staple-like patterns. Each iteration recalls motifs from the mixture of representational and subjective memory in the form of doodles and Zentangle patterns. Her work is fabricated to address the urgent issues related to material upcycling and sustainability in the fashion industry.

Dichotomies of black, white and gray are expressed in Safdar Ali Shah’s installation as a comment on themes such as Islamophobia and white supremacy and the complexities within these terms in the context of global politics. The connotation of the white military uniform worn by the figures in the image plays with the perception of the viewer by linking it with the context of pilgrims and their circumambulations around holy sites whose prototype is displayed in the foreground of the image on elevated ground.

Disintegrating totems and symbols are smouldered by Mohamed Ali Talpur in an act of trial and error associated with meditative artistic practices. The dark silhouettes of a cube, two identical pillars and a winged horse make their presence felt in the absence of their three-dimensionality.

Talpur also extracts subconscious imagery such as an empty sea shell or a seahorse in juxtaposition with the meticulously crafted grid boxes, as if he’s challenging the viewer to make their interpretations from the segregating components.

Ayaz Jokhio’s surreal artwork heavily relies on the analysis of its audience as he paints six variations of the same empty cup of tea on each side of a white cube. Each version of the cup shows various angles from where it has been captured such as the aerial view or the side views. His work depicts the complex dynamics between the maker, the meaning, and the audience, each sharing their autonomy in critically analysing artworks.

Whereas other artists have deployed the shape of the cube by reinterpreting it in a somewhat physical fashion, Jovita Alvares and Ammar Faiz examine its virtual aspects and ratios in video format. Both of them observe themes of marginalisation and displacement of certain communities and of their language and culture according to their own terms. Alvares, of Goan origin, employs her family photographs by blazing them from various places in a macabre manner, accompanied by unsynchronised subtitles of prose that doesn’t make sense of its intended meaning, instead depicting the loss of the origin language. Faiz resorts to humour and leisure to reflect on the exclusivity culture of the city centres due to ever-expanding urbanisation. He documents several figures indulged in the Punjabi folk game of Body Body (Wanju Wan) which is fading from the collective memory, as are its players.

Sousan Qadeer is an interdisciplinary artist and educator based in Lahore