Karachi—Madeeha Hyder’s Beyond Innocence isa haunting exhibition of portraits of school children, drawn and painted in theshadow of the Peshawar school massacre.
It has been running at the Canvas Art Gallery for a week which presents apleasant ambience for viewing the pictures.
The mass murder of children at Peshawar’s Army Public School in December 2014has cast a long shadow of dread on schools across Pakistan, and Madiha Hyderhas captured that fear and trepidation amongst school children through the mediumof oil paintings.
The looks on the children’s faces are quite striking, as the boy in the box inthe picture “Hide’n’Seek” looks fearfully out. The girl in “Eyes Wide Open”looks wary whilst the two boys play-guarding one girl are aptly titled “A Stormis Coming”. In the picture “Chaos,” a girl is drawn standing in a hop scotchbox, breaking the game’s rules and demonstrating how easily people’s lives canbe disrupted.
The unease captured in the children’s stances, the way they are frozen inapprehension, with alarmed eyes and toy guns or scissors gripped in their handscan numb the viewer. The children fix the onlooker with their gaze amidst theirplayfulness. The anxiety of a Pakistani school girl is aptly conveyed inMadeeha Hyder’s paintings as the plurality of gender representation in BeyondInnocence is of Pakistani school girls.
Most of the girls stare back at the observer, clutching an object withtrepidation. The blank looks on their face could be filled in with any negativeemotion.
The paintings indicate how precarious schooling in Pakistan has become for awhile. Happiness seems absent from these paintings in a reflection of a sort ofwithdrawal of joy that Pakistan’s school children might be experiencing.
Madeeha Hyder is a graduate of the Indus Valley School of Arts with experiencein teaching arts and has had numerous exhibitions. Her previous work has beenexhibited at Khaas Gallery in Islamabad, Karachi’s Frere Hall, the Karachi ArtsCouncil, Indus Valley Gallery and The Second Floor’s Art Gallery.