Our age of communication has made interaction possible not just between people living in far off territories but amongst individuals from different times. If technology has diminished distances, likewise, the passion for past and locating human heritage has made it possible to have a discourse with those who inhabited the planet centuries ago.

The works of visual arts, normally considered mute and beyond the limits of language, do communicate in various ways. These invoke ideas, raise questions and appeal to emotions in the viewer. What takes place on seeing a work of art is a multi-folded phenomenon. It unleashes a chain of conversations -- and convergences -- between the viewer and the artist, between contemporary culture and the society that has produced the work and its maker.

What emerges out of these interactions is intriguing and unexpected because a work of art says different things to each person who sees it. A recent viewer might locate meaning in a work of art that was hidden from earlier viewers, or was not intended by the artist. This possibility guarantees the work a life longer than its producer or its immediate audience.

However, there are many other factors for infusing an interest in the artwork -- in altering its importance and transforming its function. Often a work made in later periods or a shift in the concept of art and creativity revises the understanding of the earlier artwork. Jorge Luis Borges points out this aspect in his essay ‘Kafka and His Precursors’. He says that fiction of Kafka not only influenced the writers of the generations that followed him, it also affected the views of authors before him, since their books are now perceived through an understanding altered by Kafka’s writings.

A recent exhibition Conversations (held from June 6-9, 2015 at the Nairang Galleries, Lahore) also dealt with the art of the past. Initiated by Peter Claes, the Ambassador of Belgium, the exhibition was the result of a project between the Royal Embassy of Belgium in Islamabad and National College of Arts Lahore. The show comprised reproductions of 15th Century miniatures from the collection of Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels and modern miniatures from Pakistan, displayed next to each other. Thus ‘Conversation’ was not only a dialogue between ages but became a discourse among diverse cultures too. Young artists trained in the discipline of miniature painting at the National College of Arts, Lahore responded to the miniatures from Brussels and composed works in connection to the imagery from a distant past.

These artists (recent graduates in miniature painting from NCA) selected samples of their favourite Belgian miniatures and reinterpreted these in their unique scheme. One could find different approaches in their responses to history: some participants picked visuals and refurbished these with a few changes; while others decided to investigate the essence of European aesthetics and reorganised it with a modern sensibility.

For example, Ali Farhan chose the structure of illuminated page of European work and reproduced similar looking imagery but with a twist -- that transformed the typical Celtic motifs into visual vocabulary of modern miniatures. In his other works, too, the figure of St George with dragon was redrawn against a backdrop in which medieval European art merged with the modern miniature from Pakistan.

Another participant, Adnan Ali Manganhar, opted for a complexity of visuals, thus combining fragments from Belgian originals to his recurring theme of Pakistani currency notes. Thus a kind of conceptual collage was composed in which elements from the two sources existed side by side, sometimes without making much sense. A case of similar simplification was observed in the works of Rubab Javed who incorporated Belgian borders in her sparse landscapes, which offered a glimpse of Punjab seen through an outsider’s point of view.

Other artists expressed deeper and serious concerns through their dialogue with the historical miniatures and the present times. Shakila Haider used Western images to describe local conditions. In her work, clusters of donkeys, row of men standing away from a sequence of looming shadows, and the queue of people before being executed indicates the political situation. The inclusion of these loaded visuals -- if viewed in relation to what takes place in Haider’s place of origin Balochistan and especially to her tribe the Hazaras which is encountering the worst genocide in the name of sectarian differences -- indicates a broader content. Shakila Haider appropriated a distant visual in order to communicate a distinct and definite condition. Yet her paintings also affirm that an artist is able to produce a work that could be connected to more than one idea and context.

In that sense, two works of Faryall Ahsan were an apt example of the way an artist employs existing art works to create personal imagery, and a modern day translation of the past. So the draped female from Belgian miniature appeared as Afghani burka-clad woman. Likewise, the wheel of fortune was represented with the ballot box -- an object that is used in the process of changing a nation’s course and destiny.

Along with these intelligent visual devices, Ahsan’s manner of making these miniatures was highly skillful and sophisticated, something that distinguished her paintings from the rest.

The works of all artists were significant on various levels. Besides offering a new interpretation of history, these also indicated how the idea of past is not limited or confined to one region or the misreading of tradition. Actually, tradition is not a static entity but a living practice that involves and incorporates influences and ingredients from diverse sources.

In the true sense and spirit of miniature painting, which from the period of Akbar and Jahangir has been assimilating pictorial references from European paintings and illuminated manuscripts, the artists participating in Conversation also tried to expand and extend the meaning of an art form. By responding to images from another culture, they enriched not only their own practice, but paved the way for a discourse that is desperately needed not in the realm of art, but in the area of culture, language, faith, politics and economy.

Perhaps this exhibition can be one exercise that leads to a bigger pursuit -- one that aims to replace the clash of civilisation into a conversation of cultures.