Figuration, in its most potent form, is not merely a study of anatomy or likeness; it is a vessel for memory, emotion, and lived experience. Shaping Figures brings together a diverse range of practices that engage the figure as a mutable form, shaped as much by internal states and personal histories as by visual structure.
Here, the figure does not always appear whole or complete. It flickers between visibility and concealment, memory and myth, intimacy and distance. For some artists, it becomes a site of reclaiming; of self, of voice, of long-silenced desires. For others, it functions as a trace of domestic rituals, of generational shifts, collective grief, or inherited dreams. The works swing between precision and fragmentation, drawing lines not just around bodies, but around the moments, spaces, and emotions they inhabit.
The exhibition defies a singular narrative. Instead, it assembles an evolving dialogue; between figuration and abstraction, control and vulnerability, gesture and silence. These are not portraits in the traditional sense; they are renderings of psychological landscapes, of bodies shaped by memory, displacement, shame, resilience, and hope.
In Shaping Figures, the figure becomes a method of seeing, remembering, of holding space. It becomes a place where personal stories overlap with larger cultural frameworks and where artistic practice becomes an act of making sense, not of what is seen, but of what is felt, remembered,or imagined. Through drawing, painting, sculpture, and mixed media, the artists offer not answers, but forms; open, layered, and in flux through which we might encounter the complexities of being.
-FS Karachiwala
