ontrary to what is commonly believed, in the context of art, no idea is original and no practice unique. This notion is validated by walking through the exhibition Chitthi Aayi Hai, which comprises ninety-nine works. As the invitation informs us, artworks made on postcards arrived “from the length, depth and breadth of Pakistan.” Pictorial messages, which, due to their accumulated number (99), assume a sacred significance. Their format and scale add an element of scarcity too, as it has been long since anyone needed this mode to send a letter or picture, let alone seen it, except when searching the archives of the Pakistan Post Office.

However, before the internet and the ease of email, paper was a regular way to communicate, among the literate as well as those who had never been schooled. The former could read and write; the latter relied on someone else to do it. Regardless of a person’s education, status, ethnicity, faith, region, gender or age, the letter, handwritten, typed or printed on a piece of paper, caused confusion, expectations and anticipation, along with happiness, excitement, desire, disappointment and despair.

These connections have disappeared with the emergence of technology everyone uses today. Any surprise immediately ceases to exist in front of an email flashing on a screen. There is no room for indefinite wait or fear of letters being misplaced, lost or destroyed in transit. Now, receiving an electronic letter is as casual as sipping a cup of tea.

In the early nineties, the Painting School of the Royal College of Art, London, envisaging the short life of letters and postcards, initiated a series of annual exhibitions called Absolute Surprise. The institution provided two postcard-sized cards, asking artists to work on one side and leave the other for their names and caption details. At the show, viewers didn’t know the makers’ identities or the identities of the artworks, which were equally priced; they were also not aware that, by paying the same amount (say, £20), they were getting a David Hockney, a Peter Blake, a Tracey Emin, a Chris Ofili, or a recent graduate.

The current exhibition (August 28-September 7, at O Art Space, Lahore) offers different types of surprises. Works created and later displayed hark back to a period now tainted with an air of romanticism, an element visible in a number of exhibits, as a few artists have concocted versions of things past that are far from factual. For example, a postcard with lines for the address, the ending paragraph of the message, the shape of a postal stamp and the imprint of an official seal is superficially surrounded by the blue and red pattern conventionally associated with the outer side of an airmail paper, folded to serve as an envelope.

Some participants have added new meanings to this defunct object from the past. Others have stuck to its need, utility and appearance. Both these approaches are evident in the exceptionally large collection of art pieces. A few artists have recreated or reinterpreted postcards; thus their work presents a tangible segment of bygone times. Postal stamps, address spaces and margins for personal messages appear in the work of Masood A Khan, Javaid Mughal, Adeela Shah and Farrukh Shahab (who deliberately or ignorantly used the pattern of an airmail letter in his postcard-like piece). In the same group, Arsalan Nasir distinguishes himself by picking an actual picture postcard of Frere Hall, Karachi, and inscribing personal text on the back.

By its nature, the postcard belongs to the public domain, like a work of art at an exhibition.

Looking at these literal perceptions of the project, one wonders whether the solutions are limited. The title of the show (curated by RM Naeem with Nurayah Sheikh Nabi) could be one reason. At the same time, for many participants, it became a point of departure as they comprehended the essence of a postcard, an item that, according to VS Naipaul, was introduced by the shipping industry to promote tourism to distant, exotic and beautiful locations. Beyond its visual component, this article remained a handy, attractive and affordable way to share feelings. Ready to be read, ironically, by the postal clerk, sorting staff and postman before being delivered to its actual destination, in contrast to a sealed letter, whose contents are accessible solely to the sender and addressee (and officials from the censor department!)

By its nature, the postcard belongs to the public domain, like a work of art at an exhibition. Hence, a range of entries do become postcards, the objects of display. Noticing this, several artists have created paintings from this functional, rudimentary object. Works that represent individual vocabularies, yet signify a tinge of private and/ or collective memory. Mussarat Mirza’s canvas echoes a haunting place beyond the bounds of date and address. Likewise, Naela Aamir’s image depicts an alley of closely joined walls rendered in a gutsy manner. Both Kiran Saleem’s and Noor-ul Huda’s small paintings remind us of segments of the past. Saleem, in her immaculate style, has produced a faded photograph seemingly pasted on a creased, pale paper; Huda has made a sample of memorabilia by leaving a sackful of faded roses on a worn-out floor.

The exhibition also includes work containing unexpected messages. For instance, Atif Khan’s The Last Correspondence is composed of a section of wire mesh on top of a surface filled with roses and insects. AB Rehman’s acrylic on canvas, with augmented reality, also jolts the audience: a half-humanised, half-robotic, deep-red letterbox amid a cluster of scattered envelopes. The scenario starts shifting, rotating and jumping once a visitor sees it through a smartphone. In the same league is Safdar Ali’s Encrypted Nama-bar (terracotta relief). It is embedded with a QR code, linking it to the earliest scripts preserved in clay tablets from Mesopotamia, demonstrating that the historic method and the contemporary practice of writing are, intrinsically, not dissimilar.

A letter, as a practical piece of paper, is the bearer of language: a set of signs representing spoken words and logical sounds for a group of people, but noise to other communities. The exhibition reveals how many languages can survive side by side today. Words, whether said loudly or whispered, hinted at by grunts, even in their absence, can communicate content if two individuals understand each other. Ayesha Quraishi’s Chitti, suggesting this aspect, shows traces of horizontal lines, indicating English and Urdu texts, mainly in their left-to-right and right-to-left orientation. The comparison of these ‘over-simplified’ lines conveys the economic split, power manipulation and class separation in a bilingual society.

The work recalls a brief letter Zahoor ul Akhlaq sent to a friend, a collector in Karachi. It began with customary details of location, date and the addressee’s title; above the usual line, “hope you are fine, and I would like to state ……” followed an entire blank page, and concluded with “Yours sincerely, Zahoor ul Akhlaq”.

The writer is a visual artist, an art critic, a curator and a professor at the School of Visual Arts and Design, Beaconhouse National University, Lahore. He can be contacted at [email protected].