Zaffar Ali

Throughout my childhood I experienced an extremist environment. Growing up in the land of Baluchistan with extremism on its peak on every aspect of life, it is almost impossible for anyone to not being getting effected by it. I have experienced hundreds of fights and murders throughout my childhood. All of these memories have a strong impact and deep impressions on my mind. Religion plays a major role in the reign of Baluchistan, extremist beliefs are practiced every day till now. With all these extremist beliefs, customs and traditions in my surrounding I ended up with a peaceful belief of ‘Tasawuf’ which is a form of Sufism, helped me connected to a better and peaceful version of myself.
Moving to Quetta in my early twenties has made me went through much intense level of extremism, racism and sectarianism. Finally landing to Lahore has opened new door of peace, intellect, literature, and knowledge towards my art practice.
As artist I am mostly concerned about various issues relevant to my cultural background and most of my works reflect multiple social, political, religious aspects as well as racism, sectarianism, injustice and terrorism. Being artist we are concerned citizens and get easily effected by the actions and extremism taken place in our surroundings. And I am always keenly observing the human behavior rapidly changing in my surrounding. Therefore, some of new works were about the different school of thoughts in Islam, the mob-mentality, and the contradiction of all the sects have been represented/conveyed in a positive way, regardless of how different the sects are in their own beliefs and religious practices, I believe that their destination and focal point is one towards God.
Taking up Miniature Painting as my major, helped me become more patient towards my professional art practice as well as towards life. This work of mine is critically questioning the concept of offering Namaz with different postures- if a person facing towards you offers salam at the end of Namaz, he starts with his right shoulder and on the other hand if a person sitting next to him, has their back against you and says his Salam, he would do so towards his right shoulder- we will see a mirror visual. Therefore, there is a contradiction/misunderstanding. Even though both are offering Salam in the direction of their right shoulder, it is the visual representation which makes us confused about the other person.