Saeed Mangi Profile by Shifa Agha

Profile : Saeed Mangi
Revised-

Shifa Agha-BS3-2K16

What is art? Some define art as an expression, some say art is created when human creativity and human imagination meets, some say it is about sharing the way we experience the world. Therefore, art has no proper definition.

However, art is not necessarily positive: it can be deliberately hurtful or displeasing: it can make you think about or consider things that you would rather not. But if it evokes an emotion in you, then it is art.

Art is a vast field and is divided into many disciplines. One of them is “communication design”, which a lot of people are not aware of.

“Communication design refers to the specific crafting and development of various aspects of the communication that reaches the intended target. It includes the possibilities of graphic design, expression design and other visual design methods”.

Now this discipline might not be that popular in Pakistan but, slowly and gradually the market is realizing the necessity of communication design and communication designers.  

Talking of communication design brings us to the subject of this feature “Saeed Mangi”.  

Saeed Mangi is an artist and Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Design of Institute of Arts and Design, University of Sindh. He was born on 4th of July, 1969 in Khairpur district. Now he lives in Jamshoro with his family.

He was very young when his interest in arts developed, as he belongs from a family who shares the love for art. He was only 13 years old when he put his first exhibition. His love for arts grew more and he decided to study arts. After the artists from his family his teachers became great inspiration for him. They changed his view that made him look at everything differently. He completed his Masters in ‘Fine Arts’ from ‘University of Sindh’, in 1995. He then started working in ‘University of Sindh’, in the same year. He was the first teacher in the department of ‘Communication Design’ of Institute of Arts and Design, University of Sindh. Later in 2005 he completed his Masters in ‘Multimedia Arts’ from ‘National College of Arts’ (NCA). Where he learnt software, filmmaking and animation.

He has put many exhibitions over the years in different cities of Pakistan, including Lahore, Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Khairpur, Jamshoro and Kotri. People buy his paintings but for him money doesn’t really matter as art is an expression and motivational tool. He thinks that an artist is at peace and through art, artist is giving something to our society. According to him our society’s perception has changed towards art and artists over the years. As before people didn’t think highly of artists. “Back in days, there were only 30-40 students in the whole department and now there are 400-500”. He believes that future will be about specializing and expertizing and people will have to choose a specific area of their field and this field too is becoming much vast.

He has also participated in different competitions and won many awards. Few of them are “Qalandar Award”, “Sachal Award”, got first position in a competition by ‘Sindh Association’.

In 2014-2015 he also remained ‘In-charge Director Sindhology’, where he along with his team created galleries and organized activities and exhibitions. Apart from this, he has also worked on illustrations, calligraphy and photography and have also taught these as subjects. He had worked in radio, newspaper and Pakistan Television (PTV) channel, Lahore.  

He was the first to make a cartoon film for kids in Pakistan, whose subject was “honour killing”. The film was aired on different channels, including BBC, which aired it for a whole month. This film is also being taught in different countries.

Apart from arts he enjoys nature. He believes that nature teaches something new every time.

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Practical work conducted under supervision of Sir Sohail Sangi 

Department of Media &Communication Studies, University of Sindh