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KARACHI: An ongoing exhibition at Sanat Initiative brings together a deeply personal exploration of identity, memory and inherited experiences.
Titled Morbid Curiosities, the exhibition features three interconnected bodies of work by Karachi-based artist Scheherazade Junejo.
The works examine her relationship with material and genetic inheritance. They also explore memory and her changing sense of self.
Junejo has divided the exhibition into three sections: A Wrinkle, The Infinite Loop and Glass Animals.
Each section approaches self-investigation from a different perspective.
Junejo told The Express Tribune that she worked on the exhibition for around nine to 10 months.
During that period, she developed three distinct bodies of work.
The exhibition includes still life, figurative pieces, drawing and embossing.
“The narrative of the three bodies of work is a little different, but in a way, it is the same. It is a self-investigation,” she said.
The artist said the exhibition centres on basic questions about identity and existence.
“Who am I? Where am I going? And what am I going to become?” she said.
Those questions run through the exhibition and connect its three different bodies of work.
In A Wrinkle, repetitive mark-making becomes a record of recurring thoughts.
The work reflects how an overthinking mind can repeatedly return to the same questions.
Ideas are revisited, challenged and undone.
Rather than offering clear answers, the work captures the uncertainty that comes with prolonged self-reflection.
Together, the three sections create a visual journey inward.
They connect physical forms with psychological and emotional experiences.
Junejo said Morbid Curiosities also marks an important transition in her artistic practice.
She has spent nearly 16 to 17 years developing a recognisable visual identity.
The new work, however, pushed her to question that identity.
“My signature, which has become my work and my identity through my work, has changed a lot with this work,” she said.
Junejo linked the shift to the natural changes that come with age.
She said growing older brings new experiences and changes the way people think.
“This is a kind of transition from young adulthood to adulthood, middle-aged life. So, the questions of that go into more depth,” she said.
The exhibition therefore reflects both an artistic and personal transition.
The darker elements of the exhibition also reflect Junejo’s growing confidence as an artist.
She uses the work to confront questions that may have been easier to avoid earlier in life.
The exhibition does not simply present aesthetically pleasing images.
Instead, it creates space for uncertainty, contradiction and uncomfortable forms of self-examination.
Its three sections move between the exposed surface of thought, the contradictions of the body and the fragile nature of memory.
Through Morbid Curiosities, Junejo turns inward.
The result is an exhibition shaped by questions about identity, inheritance and the changing self.
