Art Ocean – An exhibition by the Students!

Photo Credits: Ali Raza

A lot of us are driven by ambition and it is the ones who take this quality and turn situations around them into opportunities that ultimately shine from amongst the crowds. A great opportunity to see these ambitions and efforts has been provided to us by the students of the department of Visual Studies, University of Karachi.

This department provides degrees in many majors including bachelors in Architecture, Textile Design, and Industrial design, Communication Design, Media, Islamic Arts and Fine Arts. Students enrolled for these degrees spend their first year learning the basics; hence, the first year is called the foundation year, the year that lays the foundation for all the majors included.

Since it is the first year of higher education, students start and end their semesters with dreams of success and accomplishments. what was not expected from these students was the immense amount of effort they put in, in an exhibition at the end of their first semester to display and offer on sale all their work and efforts.

Photo Credits: Fahad

Yes! The students of the foundation year have put together an exhibition at the department’s foundation hall. This exclusive and creative exhibition is called the ‘Art Ocean’ and is open to all who wish to visit.

Upon entering the hall one can feel the vast amount of hard work put into this little ‘home-made’ exhibition. The self-made lamps by the entire batch provide the mood lighting of this event. These lamps are made from self-made paper and bamboo sticks and are exclusively designed by the students themselves. Some of these, you may be pleased to know are also on sale!

Photo Credit: Fahad

Moving further in, you can have a look at a variety of hand-made paper. These papers are made by recycling old notebooks, newspapers, magazines, using banana peel offs, onion skins and frankly, I don’t even remember what more. Furthermore, these papers are used in innovative ideas for albums, notebooks, 3D models and things you will find at the exhibition!

A stage on the farther side of the hall exhibits carved spheres of plaster and the wall behind them hosts plenty of masks of various designs, a shelf alongside displays a variety of bookmarks. You may however, also come across things that were not meant to be an assignment. One student, called Ehsan. E, had designed and built a chair along with his brother that is gorgeous enough to be sold many times over.

It might be true that this is a downscale exhibition put together by students, but what is also true is that you enter the hall with a smile on your face and the relieved, happy, exhilarated faces of these students with eyes shining at their achievements make you leave feeling proud of them, whether you know them personally or not.

So those of you, you haven’t yet been there, enjoy this article and visit their page on Facebook to catch up with what you might have missed and what you may still be able to find. And from those of us who have already been there, here is a Hats Off to you guys who put in so much effort! ‘Great job Guys!’