The exhibition ‘All That Was Left Behind’ at VM Art Gallery brought together two artists whose works deal with traces of the past and impermanence, through very different approaches.

Throughout the history of painting, artists have used colour not simply as embellishment but as a way to construct emotion, atmosphere and psychological depth. From the dreamlike landscapes of Peter Doig to the emotional intensity of Mark Rothko’s colour fields, colour has often carried meaning beyond representation. In ‘All That Was Left Behind’, colour becomes the strongest link between the practices of Zahabia Khozema and Nain Tara, shaping mood, memory and emotional experience across their works.

Khozema’s works take a more narrative turn. Drawing from memories of an industrial town in central Punjab, her paintings reconstruct fragments of a fading place by narrating the story of a boy and his connection to the town. Landscapes and traces of the industrial town appear throughout the works, but they do not function as documentary images.

Instead, they resemble remembered scenes, suspended somewhere between reality and imagination. Her energetic use of colour gives the paintings an almost dreamlike quality. Blues, oranges and greens collide across the canvas in........

© Dawn (Magazines)