n her latest exhibition, Adeela Suleman appears to be fulfilling Michelangelo’s long-standing wish. After completing the ceiling, he painted The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican but always desired to be recognised as a sculptor. In The Story of Art, EH Gombrich mentions that Michelangelo initially refused the commission for frescoes in the vault. “He was convinced that this thankless commission had been palmed off on to him through the intrigues of his enemies.” However, “When the Pope remained firm, he started to work… alone on a plan which has indeed continued to ‘amaze the whole world’ from the moment it was revealed.”

Astonishing as it is, the work of art remains two-dimensional. While it demonstrates the Renaissance master’s command of the human body, it also confirms how he composed a historic narrative still relevant to present times. As an Australian novelist once remarked about literature, it “continues to be read and shape our sense of ourselves.”

Adeela Suleman reflects on the fresco that has captivated humanity for centuries with its layers of meaning by reimagining segments of it in three dimensions through relief sculpture. Her work, featured in the solo exhibition, Retribution (Dec 8,–Jan 19, The Barracks Art Museum, Lahore), is a melting point of forms and interpretations. Flat images from The Last Judgment are raised from the surface in rosewood and painted, not in the refined aesthetic of the High Renaissance but in a style reminiscent of plastic toys, decorative items and touristic artefacts commonly found in our surroundings.

In her past work, Suleman has drawn on imagery, styles, techniques, materials and references from popular culture, miniature paintings and colonial-era illustrated accounts of South Asia. Her recent focus on The Last Judgment, Michelangelo’s 16th Century masterpiece, is significant—not only because of its theme of judgment but also for the reactions it provoked among contemporaries due to its visual elements.

The fresco is “a depiction of the Second Coming of Christ and the final and eternal judgement by God of all humanity. The dead rise and descend to their fate, as judged by Christ, who is surrounded by prominent saints,” along with angels and condemned men. Most of the figures are nude or appear so, a feature that scandalised the public and drew criticism from religious authorities. Some clerics went as far as calling for the fresco’s destruction and attempts were made to cover its nakedness.

Michelangelo further challenged orthodoxy by stripping angels of their wings, emphasising the presence, power and pleasure of the human body in a work created for the Pope—the supreme pontiff of a faith that often views the body as sinful. Additionally, he blurred distinctions between sinners, saints and angelic hosts, pushing against rigid religious hierarchies and conventions. Suleman’s engagement with this masterpiece, therefore, not only revisits its enduring artistic significance but also highlights its historic controversies and cultural provocations.

There are other notable deviations in The Last Judgment, such as Christ being depicted beardless—a departure from traditional iconography. As Leo Steinberg, the American art critic, points out, “Roland Freart (1662) criticised Michelangelo for not following Scripture by depicting Christ standing instead of enthroned.” Steinberg further notes that “the Vatican’s Master of Ceremonies [Biagio] complained of the nudities in the Sistine Last Judgment even before the fresco was finished.” Michelangelo’s work, though rooted in a religious theme, also includes elements of subversion and resistance. Steinberg observes that “the painter retaliated by depicting his critic [Biagio] in the loathsome figure of Minos,” the Greek mythological judge of the dead in the underworld.

Adeela Suleman’s recreation of this historic wall painting on the walls of The Barracks is both impressive and thought-provoking. Her choice of characters from a composition featuring over 300 figures invites reflection on the concepts, concerns and conflicts embedded in her selection.

Suleman’s reliefs focus on specific scenes, including angels blowing trumpets and resurrecting the saved souls, an angel holding an open book of deeds or records toward them and a horror-struck man who has just heard his verdict, with a green demon clinging to his lower half, seemingly pulling him down. Surrounding these larger than life figures are clouds, the upper torsos of two human beings awakening, and a scattering of flying and standing crows.

Through her deliberate choices, Suleman not only engages with the grand narrative of The Last Judgment but also invites viewers to consider its layers of meaning and its enduring resonance with contemporary themes of judgment, redemption and human frailty.

In a separate section of the exhibition, Adeela Suleman presents three found vintage ceramic plates, intricately painted with segments from The Last Judgment. The First Clarion Call and The Final Clarion depict angels who, in Michelangelo’s fresco, are positioned above the condemned, directing their trumpets away from these damned souls. The third plate, Towards Perpetual Torment, features a demonic figure surrounded by monsters. In the original fresco, Michelangelo famously replaced the head of the devil with the face of Biagio, the Vatican’s Master of Ceremonies, who had protested that the artist had painted him “tormented as a devil in inferno.” The Pope dismissed Biagio’s complaint with a wry remark, admitting his powerlessness to intercede in hell.

Suleman’s decision to isolate and re-contextualise these specific elements from Michelangelo’s masterpiece reveals an inherent connection to the Renaissance artist. By focusing on these moments of defiance within the original composition, Suleman underscores the enduring power of the iconographer over the iconoclast—the triumph of creative expression against censorship and dogma.

This thematic alignment resonates deeply with Suleman’s own experience. In 2019, she faced censorship during the 2nd Karachi Biennale when her installation, Killing Fields of Karachi, which addressed extrajudicial killings in the city, was forcibly dismantled. The installation at Frere Hall was sealed, some of its components destroyed and ultimately removed from the site.

Through her work, Suleman draws parallels between her struggles and those of artists like Michelangelo, asserting the right to creative freedom and the enduring power of art to confront oppression and challenge authority.

One cannot say with certainty what became of those who ordered the ransacking and confiscation of Adeela Suleman’s art installation, but history has borne witness to the enduring triumph of art. Despite its destruction, the work was repeatedly referenced, discussed in public forums, shared on social media, and ultimately re-fabricated in Suleman’s solo exhibition Allegory of War at the Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham, in 2022. The trajectory of Suleman’s work recalls the lasting legacy of Michelangelo’s fresco, which continues to be admired and studied centuries later, while the official who condemned its imagery has been relegated to obscurity – remembered only as a footnote and a villain, in the story of the Renaissance master.

There may be multiple reasons – some conscious, others perhaps latent – for Suleman’s decision to draw on The Last Judgment. The work centres on a supreme judge, possessing absolute authority to redeem or condemn humanity on doomsday. In our contemporary era, mortals have increasingly assumed such roles, wielding the power to determine innocence or guilt, often through state machinery and legal apparatus. This intersection of divine judgment and mortal arbitration resonates on a personal level for Suleman, whose husband is a lawyer engaged in Supreme Court cases, including some public interest cases. This minor detail underscores the broader thematic exploration of authority, justice and the complex interplay between power and morality in her work.

In The Last Judgment, angels are depicted blowing their trumpets to awaken both the saved and the damned. Drawing on this imagery, Adeela Suleman has created 6 Celestial Trumpets in rosewood with gold leaf gilding and repoussé on hand-beaten steel sheets, accented with velvet and silk jamawar. These pieces are displayed in two opposite rows within a dimly lit space, guiding visitors towards another partially illuminated area where her monumental Blood Chandelier 2 (red LED lights, metal, powder coating) is suspended.

Beyond the shared motifs drawn from Michelangelo’s Renaissance fresco, a unifying element in Suleman’s solo exhibition is the haunting classical composition Sada-i-Mehshar – Raag Marwa in D9 Flat, performed by Arshad Mahmud and Ustad Nafees Ahmed, which resonates throughout the gallery. The raga’s title evokes the imagery of doomsday, a theme rooted in the 16^th Century masterpiece, The Last Judgment, yet one that feels eerily prescient in the global and local crises of the 21st Century.

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