It’s exciting to be writing for an online readership, my earliest texts for Dawn and Newsline in the 1990s, predate the birth of millennials, so I am hoping this blog will connect with a new generation and spark conversations. Thank you TKC for inviting me to do this blog.

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 with both anecdotal and critical information. The readers will be introduced to pioneers whose disruption helped Art to transition from classical to Modernism.  Insights into the life of individuals who shaped a robust movement by setting up Art spaces and academic institutions, who carried out early documentation and experimented with idioms that redefined Art. The unshrouding of these undocumented moments will bring into focus some new contours of Pakistan’s Art landscape.

When I think of my entry into the Art world in December 1970, I cannot separate it from a tall lanky man with wavy hair who incessantly puffed at his pipe and his eyes behind heavy spectacles astutely gauged the potential of every cohort. His dignified demeanor and passion convinced my father, a progressive man, to enroll his only daughter into the art school against the advice of his peers who saw it as too unconventional. The person was Ali Imam, the then Head of The Central Institute of Arts and Crafts, a man who spent most of his life, advocating, enlightening, supporting, connecting individuals and the community to Art. His mentoring helped us to dream big for Art.

Ali Imam combined his passion for Pakistan with his passion for art, and he proactively worked to anchor Modernism deep into the cultural life, he was the first to groom and guide Modern Art collectors. His Indus Gallery was an exhibition space that often doubled up as a teaching studio, a seminar hall and entertainment space for his Sunday afternoon soirees. A prolific and tireless speaker his talks from Dharki, deep in Sindh, to institutions all over the country demystified the Modernist aesthetic to curious audience. Once, while still weak from a heart attack, he accepted an invitation to speak at an important national event in Islamabad just because he did not want to forego the opportunity to influence the movers and shakers in the Capital. Kishwar Nahid, the then Director General of PNCA was delighted to have him and had an ambulance on standby throughout the trip. More than once, I saw how Art was life for the pioneers and everything else followed.

Today the awareness of inclusivity both as discourse and intervention has begun to get traction and one frequently hears conversations full of theoretical references to class and privilege. Along with this I also see how this well- meaning direction is accompanied by a tentativeness, as artists learn to unpack the reality outside their bubble. Going back to another time the connection with ‘the masses’, as public audience was referred to by the Masters, was motivated by a different consciousness of inclusivity which was integral to their struggles, both internal and external. It came from the shared post- Partition experience and belief in socialist ideology rooted in grassroots engagement for progress.

Standing under Sadequain’s ‘Ilm aur Amal’ the energy of the moving masses is palpable, the confrontation between the forces of enlightenment and ignorance, appears both like a prayer and a premonition. Sadequain’s protagonists are migrants from earlier murals, at Mangla Dam they appear in a tribute to the men in overalls that populated the tribune hall where the murals were installed. Heroism of the proletariat is a persistent theme in his work, it can also be seen as the artist’s  baang-e dara or shikwa as he challenged socital ruptures. I remember at one of my meeting with the fakir artist, he was comfortably seated on the floor at the Lahore Museum, working on drawings for the mural in progress. He was frequently interrupted by visitors and he took it in his stride without a frown. That moment made me realize that Sadequain is probably the only artist who is a household name in Pakistan, all because his Art and Art making was as ‘public’ as his audience.

Bashir Mirza’s 1967 pen and ink ‘Portrait of Pakistan’ may appear as a simple drawing portfolio  but it has a subtext that cannot be ignored: why did the artist only celebrated those who labored in fields, on boats and streets for a harvest of survival while ignoring the urban modern of the burgeoning cities, which the advertising and news media of the 1960s were so enamored with. This well- crafted series cleverly allowed the wrinkles and eyes to tell a story from the fringe. Parallel to these elegant works were his private drawings, a theatre of bodies contorted with the physical and emotional turmoil of displacement. Bashir Mirza who came on the last train from Amritsar in 1947, was a child witness to violence and despair that never left him, and Art became a way to deal with it. While in Australia as the Cultural Attache, a diplomatic assignment that allowed vital treatment for his chronic ailment, when he learnt about nuclear testing in the Pacific Ocean, he could not keep quiet on what it meant for mankind. Needless to say his ‘outspoken’ painting cut short his time as a diplomat.

Nagori’s Art came from a space of defiance. The oppressive dictatorship of the 1980s, predicted in Ilm o Amal saw the army of intellectuals and creatives pushed against the wall. Nagori only had his brush to retaliate with which he painted the series with the screaming ‘man on the street’ trapped under the totem pole of power. The piercing scream did reverberate in the nation’s capital and he was denied a gallery wall there, eventually he had to settle for a ‘hit and run’ show for an afternoon at Ali Imam’s Indus Gallery. His Bhel woman painting with an upward turned crow- head begging for rain, keeps coming back like the silent screams trapped in Guernica or Ai Weiwei’s ode to young lives lost in the great Chinese earthquake, an installation with piles of straightened rusted girders from flattened schools. Nagori’s ‘portrait of Pakistan’ from the 1980s and 1990s are about a powerlessness that was fast metastasizing into mass death may it be drought, exploitation or violence. It was decades later that these grim works found galleries and collectors. I remember Nagori’s eyes would burn and shine with unshed tears when he talked about the poverty of his students from Thar, as the Head of the Department, he passionately advocated for a shorten art program at the University of Sind to stem the dropout rate. It was his biggest regret to see talent snuffed out by indifference.

The Masters lived is ‘simpler’ times of a nascent country where hardship came with hope as they were a part of the surge for change. Art had a role to play in creating a Modern identity.  Today, artistic vision is weighed down by mythologies without hope, it is created in a divided and complicated world with visible and invisible barriers of class, racism, prejudice and extremism exacerbated by power abuse. We all know that inclusivity sans prejudice has the collective power to transform, but it is a much more difficult terrain to navigate than we realize. The outsider’s gaze and the illusionary proximity created by discourse on poverty and privilege can open doors to creative exploitation of somebody else’s truth. Maybe introspection on the shared experience of extremist violence in the past and the Coronavirus threat in the present, can show us how important it to develop bonds of trust and empathy as humans before we take it further as artists.

Title image: Sadequain, Ilm aur Amal, 1987, Sadequain Gallery , Frere Hall, Karachi