The lake is already awake when the artists arrive. Houseboats rock gently, fastened more by habit than rope. Nets dry in uneven arcs along their wooden spines. Children lean over the water’s edge, watching reflections rupture and reform. For five…
We are twenty-five years into the new century, and despite all the curbs on freedom of expression Contemporary Art has successfully navigated the deeply fraught terrain and become an integral part of the country’s cultural consciousness. Curatorial practice has supported…
Punjab Panorama: A stylistic diversity in Painting and Graphics Author: Miriam Habib Originally published in NuktaArt, Vol 2, ONE, 2007 Cover Design: Sabiha Mohammad Imani Source of inspiration: Adeela Suleman 'Silencer 1 & 2', Rashid Arshad 'In Essence 13' and…
The cultural and economic value of textile craft micro-enterprises is often visible in present-day urban centres, projects led by non-profits, and consumerist practices in Pakistan. Reading through definitions of textile craft4, one comes across descriptions referring to activities engaged with…
Last year, I visited ‘The Haveli Museum’ in Karachi, where the exhibition The Coat of Many Colours displayed textile-based crafts from Sindh. These objects included bujhki16, coverlets, and posh17, among several others. Observing these items stirred a quiet nostalgia for…
To be nostalgic is to exist between fragments of a memory and its imagined idealization. Curated by Noor Ahmed, the exhibition fanaa is the eclipse at Sanat Initiative presents works by the artist Zahra Mansoor where it navigates the domestic…
The Iran, Israel and USA war has become increasingly about digital imagery, fake news, AI generated scenes as a part of its war strategy. The television and digital news channels churn out information that is too much to absorb and…
When I first came across the title Interrupted Reveries, I found myself pausing to think about the display. The curator Fatma Shah translates this title as ‘Khwab o Khayal’ in Urdu. And this reminded me of the French philosopher Gaston…
This essay is based on an interview between the author and Karachi-born, Brooklyn-based artist Hiba Schahbaz. Hiba Schahbaz’s paintings look autobiographical; self-portraiture is a recurring theme representing her unknown and unresolved cognitive musings. However, the contexts shift visually between the…
In her solo show titled “Lines and Language” at Karachi’s Canvas Gallery, the artist Rabeya Jalil drills into gesture and asks: how do we move, strike, puncture, and scrape? In Jalil’s paintings we may see amorphous blobs, strokes, and patches…