When you think of the sun, you imagine its brilliance – rising each morning with promise, giving warmth, giving life. For Kolahon, the sun was never just light. It was pressure. It was the relentless whisper in his ear, amplified by the constant ringing of his invisible disability: Be better. Climb higher. Prove yourself.
Everything came to a head on a remote mountainside in Pakistan. Near collapse at K2’s base camp, facing both the mountain and the voice that had haunted him for years, he finally confronted the chaos in his mind and in surrender, found clarity.
‘If I hadn’t come close to death on that mountain, I would never have known this. I would have just kept running, always chasing another summit, wanting others to see me as successful, wanting my parents’ approval. But that day I surrendered, I realised that it’s not necessary. None of that is necessary.’
Out of that turning point came Dying Sun, his latest exhibition at Curu Gallery running until September 11, where the blazing star isn’t eternal, it’s fading, collapsing under its own gravity, yet strangely offering a new way to live.
The voice that wouldn’t stay quiet
Before Kolahon was an artist, he was an architect. He designed homes, buildings, cities – drawing lines for other people’s visions. On paper, it was stability. Inside, it was suffocation.
‘I wanted to be the nice guy in the office,’ he remembers. ‘But inside, I kept hearing: I don’t want to follow the rules.’ That inner voice refused to stay quiet. It mocked the routines, questioned the purpose of each blueprint and demanded something raw and honest. He named himself Kolahon, meaning chaos, because that’s what it felt like – an endless clash between what he was expected to do and what he longed to create.
At first, art was his escape, his diary. After long days of precision and order, he filled sketchbooks with strange figures – part human, part machine – reflecting the mechanical way he moved through life. Then came crypto art and NFTs, which suddenly turned his private chaos into something people valued. Sales freed him from the office. But even as his world expanded, the voice was still there, reminding him: Not enough. Keep climbing.
Collapsing on the mountainside
The idea for Dying Sun was born on a remote mountainside in Pakistan. Kolahon had spent years seeking clarity through climbs, but nothing prepared him for K2’s base camp, one of the highest, most isolated places on earth. Each day he walked twenty kilometres, hauling supplies, battling altitude sickness and the constant ringing in his ears that had haunted him for years. One evening, exhausted and falling behind, he collapsed by a stream, staring at the looming peak. ‘Maybe this is it. Maybe all these mountains, all these achievements… do they even matter?’
As night fell, the Milky Way stretched overhead. Stars twisted and danced, casting a hypnotic spell over him. In that moment, he finally confronted the voice in his head and the persistent hum he had carried for years and found clarity. ‘That night was the start of Dying Sun. I metaphorically died there and woke up with a new perspective. I no longer wanted to conquer mountains for the sake of achievement. I wanted to connect with nature, with people, with life itself.’
This profound experience became the heart of his exhibition. The endless rocks, hidden crevices and sprawling peaks transformed into metaphors for human struggle – the tension between carrying weight and finding freedom, the push of ambition and the release of surrender.
‘Before, travel and challenges were about strict checklists and perfect plans. After Dying Sun, it’s about joy, letting things unfold naturally. That’s the essence of the exhibition: walking with effort and learning to let go.’
The sun that never sets on canvas
So how does Kolahon portray the dying sun on canvas? The exhibition unfolds in three movements, beginning with the works created before the Dying Sun incident.
In this first part, the paintings capture struggle, resistance and the weight of ambition. Figures carry stones up endless slopes, embodying the stubborn will to prove themselves, to shed skins that no longer fit, to become something else. ‘The sun was like a whisper,’ Kolahon states. ‘Every morning it told me: you’re not good enough yet. You must go further, climb higher, be better. At times that whisper became cruel, as if I was competing with myself endlessly.’
The figures reflect his inner states – anger, perseverance, fragility, curiosity – like characters from a tarot deck. Inspired by the Strength card, Kolahon paints women embracing lions or dragons, images of courage that embrace rather than conquer. ‘Each small figure is an emotion,’ he explains. ‘They carry my ambition, my laziness, my hunger for knowledge, my softness. It’s not about characters but states of mind, moving forward together.’
The physical process mirrored the emotional. ‘During creation, I had severe ear problems from deep dives,’ he explains. ‘The constant ringing and pressure was unbearable at times. That hum became part of the work. It is a hidden weight beneath every climb, reminding me to seek calm and balance.’ In the paintings, he explains, ‘Those invisible burdens are the little vibrations that push the figures forward, unseen but felt.’
After Dying Sun, the works shifted. Figures show vulnerability, openness. Stars spin rhythmically. Climbing continues, but with presence, not strain.’ He points to a canvas: ‘This one is the moment a stone lifts from the ground. It’s not gone, but it’s no longer heavy. It’s part of the journey, part of me.’
Finally, Kolahon gathered the journey into the immersive motion room, the exhibition’s heart. ‘This room is everything condensed,’ he says. ‘We collaborated with XD49, motion design studio to tell the story.’ He describes the three loops: ‘The sun dies, chaos erupts, stars scatter and slowly new orbits emerge. The wall fills with stars; wherever you look, figures dance, celebrating, living anew.’ The soundscape, crafted with DJs and engineers, mirrors the cosmic rhythm. ‘Visitors feel the universe breathing. It’s slow, meditative, a reflection of ambition, struggle, vulnerability and renewal.’
Is your sun dying?
Dying Sun mirrors the world we live in now, a time when each generation carries its own vision of how life should be. We push ourselves to be better, to outpace expectation, yet in that striving we often forget: every step adds weight to the load we carry. And sometimes, life is simpler than we allow. To live day by day is not wrong – if it brings light, if it doesn’t wound.
When asked what he hopes the audience will take away, Kolahon explained:
‘The truth is, this whole exhibition is like my personal diary. But I think it connects with everyone. The pressure of self-expectation, the desire to be fulfilled, to succeed, to carry burdens until you’re exhausted. I wanted people to feel that weight, to see the moments of heaviness, the moments of letting go and even the fear of emptiness. These days, when we stop, we feel unproductive. We rush to fill every silence. But I’ve come to see that emptiness is where we grow. It’s the space that tells us what we truly want.’