Untitled (Turmoil Series)

For Altaf, the silencing of a citizenry through adverse laws and authoritarian tendencies was something that was intended to cause damage to individual liberties and freedoms. Here, a face, sewn together like a mask, has a palimpsest-like label stuck across the mouth consisting of ghostly faces who may have suffered for their acts of speaking out. Altaf lent a political sheen to his paintings through his scathing indictment of a society that failed to speak up—a dereliction of its duty to the nation.