A question I have often asked myself: what made Rabia Zuberi, a young woman in the 1960s, commit all her energies to building an art institution? To undertake such an ambitious project thereby leaving her no time to raise a…
Walking through the pavilions at EXPO 22, one could see many carefully selected layers of identity: history, innovation, national resources and culture; all woven into a visitor experience that spoke of both a nation’s self- perception and the image it…
The word code is acquiring a new meaning for me; and as it shifts from generic associations like Morse code and dress code, in recent months it has been all about digital application: the building blocks of art work. Technology…
Critics and historians seldom know what to do with art practices that evolve along an unpredictable trajectory. They are difficult to pigeonhole and discuss in relationship to established frameworks. The discourse around such art practices, however challenging, can also be…
It was a strange co-incidence, that the day Bashir Mirza died I had called him up but got no response. He had been unwell for a few weeks and I was hoping he was better and I would get to…
Recently in my research on decolonization I came across two museum projects that show an institutional commitment to revisiting the dark recesses of colonial history. In 2019 Manchester Museum, UK, commemorated hundred years since the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre (1919) that…
When Hernando de Soto came up with the term ‘Dead Capital’, it was mainly referring to the economic activity outside the formal structure. A people’s economy that is often bigger, more resilient and embedded in its context but is never…
Art in Pakistan has a story that needs to be told by all who have lived through its turbulent years. As an insider to it for half a century I will be using this space to connect history with today…
Art in Pakistan has a story that needs to be told by all who have lived through its turbulent years. As an insider to it for half a century I will be using this space to connect history with today…