MEMORY, MYTH, AND METAPHOR IN THE PAINTINGS OF AQEEL AHMED SOLANGI: A CRITICAL STUDY OF VISUAL LANGUAGE IN CONTEMPORARY PAKISTANI ART

Abstract

In the paintings of contemporary Pakistani artist Aqeel Ahmed Solangi, landscape becomes a symbolic space of memory, myth, temporality and imagined belonging. In this paper, Solangi's visual language is explored in a qualitative art-historical approach, by analyzing, interpreting and contextually reading selected works, along with exhibition documentation, artist profiles, catalogue material and published criticism. It considers Solangi's paintings as memory-spaces: pictorial environments that are constructed to encompass landscape, object, atmosphere, and cultural memory. In all of these exhibitions, including The Root, The Ground and the Air, Vus'at-e-Bahr-o-Bar, The Sites of Myth, and Fictional Homelands, motifs like clouds, periwinkle flowers, tents, boats, trees, stones, water, and architectural fragments are not mere decorative elements but rather function as a kind of visual grammar. It also takes into account recent pieces where roses, lotus shapes, birds, rainbows, celestial figures and emptiness-related ovals further develop the earlier vocabulary into a more cosmic and mythical mode. Within the context of Solangi's life, regional context, literary connections and exhibition history, the study traces his process of transforming local and personal experiences into a painterly language of place, absence, transience as well as metaphoric belonging and place-making that is very contemporary.