The mapping of new directions (and hence of new traditions) evolves out of a process of cultural conditioning that is the structural basis of attitude and viewpoint. A viewpoint that seems to be located within the postcolonial construct acknowledges the significance of gaze as an integral factor that contributes to the nature of artistic practices and readings of it. The issues that are the outcome of the socio-economic and political developments of the recent past have shaped not only the artistic sensibility particularly in the third world, but have brought with them a transformation in the cultural fiber that has led to the present state of contradictions in terms of attitudes towards aesthetics and a confrontation between the ‘traditional’ and the ‘contemporary’ as it exists and operates within the specificity of art-making in Pakistan. Functioning on a multilayered existence, these layers unravel a generation trying to grapple with the dilemmas of identity both within Pakistan, and of new identities of the displaced and the dislocated, all of which remains saddled with the colonial mind set.

Conscious efforts to detach from a historically significant past and to seek a denial of its validity to current artistic practices appear to be some factors that have contributed to the surfacing of the dilemmas of identity and possibly also of an identity crisis. As a result the dichotomy that surfaces can be seen as a symptom or condition, but also as a point of celebration of contradictions. That is if we are able to decipher the influences and the undercurrents that shape it and pose the challenge of looking at the self from a ‘gaze’ that is free from stereotypical pin-holing and a resistance to producing a ‘package’ that can gain validity within the domain of the western metropolis. The location of the self has become more complex with newer trajectories that have been rooted in a western hegemony coming in when the ‘foreign’ educated returned to teach at the country’s art schools especially during the early 90s and since.  Many other interconnected factors have brought in a deep sense of alienation and of a disconnect of artists with their particular socio-cultural environment, having posed new questions in the validity of art and its interpretation with regard to the specificity of ‘context’.

The visibly marked shift in gaze since the 90s now appears like a second coming and could be identified as one of the key elements that has contributed to the existing schizophrenia, although the process of indoctrination of foreign ideas and intervention with the introduction of western art history in art schools had begun in the 60s. Niilofur Farrukh writes that the advent of Modernism must however be seen as a continuation of the politics of cultural interference in South Asia. Systematic meddling by colonial powers through overt and covert means during the British Raj had eroded the craft base and mutated Miniature Painting into the Company School of Painting.  Marginalized and misrepresented, the collective cultural legacy was being erased from the Indian mind. The critic sees the advent of Modernism of ‘post-Partition artistic synthesis as the intellectually motivated decision of free citizens, symbolizing freedom, progress, nationalistic zeal, and a search for identity for a new nation’, and cites the problems that came with the ‘initiative to de-hegemonize’. ‘Eurocentric art scholars could not appreciate works outside fixed notions, privileging one-way appropriations: all non-European works had to conform to categories of the exotic or the derivative. The canons of European Modernism were simply not open to accommodate multiple modernisms.’¹

The concerns of the new Modernists through the years leading to the 70s and up until the 80s remained linked to an ideology of plurality, and from Allama Iqbal’s vision of Khudi (ego, self, signifying individualism), encapsulating a new freedom for the individual as well as for the new nation on the eve of its independence. Western Modernism was internalized as a supportive force to the ideals and context of the emerging socio political equations. Bashir Mirza’s ‘expressionistic’ brush strokes in his Black Sun series stemmed from here, as also translating the anguish of a nation at war. Sadequain’s satirical works, displaying bleeding fingers and a truncated head with a crow’s nest, and his imagery inspired by the Gadani cacti, were frenzied expressions of an artist connected very much to the ‘land’ and its socio-political reality.

There has been an ongoing process of assimilation of multiple identities within local art practices, but the new trajectories that have come to surface more recently due to the result of newer ideas and imported ideals pose questions related more specifically to a clear shift in focus of audience and market; of marketing a certain kind of art that will easily fit a specific mold and expectation of a targeted consumer; it seems that artists who did seek this route were consciously indifferent to internalizing and rephrasing the new matrix in relation to their context. This new self has no doubt been mentally located in a ‘neo imperialistic’ space that has sought to look at cultural specificity in denial and from the gaze of another (self). At the root functions an educational system that neither educates in the historical, literary, philosophical or artistic traditions of either the Western module in terms of understanding its undercurrents or implications to this society on the whole, or that of the Subcontinent with much respect or depth, resulting in a generation of artists and educators whose philosophical sustenance relies largely on the superficial engagement with the ‘junk’ culture of global capitalism.

The educational and social divide between the ‘English medium’ and the ‘Urdu medium’ in Pakistan became more pronounced over the years, as the elite who have been in positions of decision making in the art schools rejected local specificities taken as backward simply because they were non western; or to have an exploitative engagement with the local as if it was a commodity. The cover image of the local jamaidar (sweeper), the staple supply of imagery for the Company School, under the watchful eye of the (white) colonizer clearly reveals the ingrained ‘Raj’ mentality of the organizers in the publicity brochure of the highly publicized ‘Jewel in the Crown’ exhibition at the Mohatta Palace Museum in Karachi (2006). It is alarming that there hasn’t been a critical discourse to deconstruct the ‘Raj’ mentality.

Certain directions mark the use of culture as a marketing ploy to gain entry into the circus of international Biennials. Interventions such as the collaborative work of visual artists and truck and cinema billboard painters, (Heart Mahal, ’96,’99, Arz-e- Maood, ’97, Very Very Sweet Madina, ’99) that had the potential to engage new audiences at home, and to explore the popular in art and the popular as art, might have raised new issues at home, but perhaps the need for cultivating newer audiences on the international forum was greater. Many other artists, like Adeela Suleman, who has done installations with discarded and found objects collected from Karachi’s local markets, have shown mostly to audiences outside Pakistan; thus engaged with the local only to the extent of appropriation, the emerging parallel initiatives disregard the relevance of a significant critical discourse at home. Self-censorship and stereotyping appear as the most devious participant of the artist’s gaze, also visible in the ‘Henna’ series,’90s (life size silhouettes of the female figure, decorated with henna patterns) by Naiza Khan.

Questions such as what is the artist’s own conceptual intervention and location are revealed amidst a clutter of derivative approaches. By relying on a ‘conformist’ formula, the work negates its own validity. Similarly, the network of residency culture seems to be dictated by a global oneness, thus becoming initiatives of exclusivity with heavy funding bodies located in the West; they automatically marginalize others whose works do not fit into their mold of expectations. They seek to ‘de-territorialize form and encourage artists to adapt to different ‘global’ publics. The art fairs and Biennials also contribute to this multicultural game’.² The result of such an exploitative dynamics is that such systems at home imbibe ‘the (western) art market that declassifies national artists, or at least subordinates the local connotations of the work, converting them into secondary folkloric references of an international homogenized discourse’.³ As the chain of demand and supply to a new market is underway, a new dynamics comes into play at home: the marginalization of artists taking the more lateral route.

“Other” agendas and interventions can be seen as subtle, but racist tools of manipulation serving the interests of another consumer.  In 1988, the South Asia Solidarity Group outlined this approach: “Like Orientalism it seeks to define our culture for us.  It tells us that it is about saris and samosas, melas and traditions. That it is complete and of the past, passive and unchanging and finally that it is something that need only be recapitulated.”⁴. There is, therefore, a constant two-way manipulation and propagation and construction of what could be termed false, or imagined identities. ‘Pakistan, Another Vision: Fifty Years of Painting and Sculpture from Pakistan’,  was the largest exhibition of Pakistani Art in recent years, curated by Timothy Wilcox, held at the Bruneii Gallery UK in 2000. The criticism that followed in Pakistan was why it was necessary for a Western curator to do the selection for a show of such magnitude. Why wasn’t there a co-curator from Pakistan? Was that the only way for art from Pakistan to gain legitimacy in the West? In the absence of state sponsorship to the arts, artists are hungry to gain access to the metropolis. The state has its own agendas of projecting the ‘correct’ image. At the same time, we may also ask why western curators are unwilling to walk the extra mile and educate themselves before they come to unfamiliar environments such as ours.

Situated amidst these conflicts, the Neo Miniature may seem to support the manipulation of an ‘exotic’ identity. But the work of Aisha Khalid and Mohammad Imran Qureshi from Lahore has in fact been able to explore new configurations that acknowledge the traditional South Asian framework narrative. The impact of these pioneers on future directions may open new possibilities whereby the artist may neither be looking to the Western module, or remain fixed within traditional ‘constrains’. Khalid’s preoccupation with the iconography of the typical   ‘image’ of the veil and Muslim female, subverts the new conventions of exploitation, especially by the Western media post 9/11. In her work, decorativeness becomes a pictorial device, and also a defiant political statement. Seen from the local context, the work at first is an acknowledgement of a historical past. On another level, it refutes ‘tradition’ by developing/discovering its own directions as well as each artist searching for his/her individualistic direction (or stylistic identity); and therefore not wanting to merely recapture the richness of a past tradition long dead. Most miniaturists will put a signature, which is incidentally inscribed in Urdu, both a gesture of cultural specificity and a detachment from the holds of the past. The ceramist Scherazade Alam (70’s, 80’s), whose approach was shaped by the Sufi traditions of the Subcontinent, however, did not sign her work. ‘The perfect picture needs no signature’, comments Orhan Pamuk, and weaves a story that discusses issues of ‘style’ and ‘signature’ as ‘means of being brazenly and stupidly self-congratulatory about flawed work’.⁵

Qureshi marks the points of possible attacks by the U.S., and of new territories of colonization. The recurring image of the scissor encapsulates a broader concern for the rearrangement of boundaries and ideals. If Khalid’s work opens questions of gaze and aesthetics, Qureshi’s politically charged iconography confronts questions and location of viewpoint. “Miniature painting is like expressing yourself in Urdu,” notes Imran.⁶. The work of Khadim Ali, originally from Bamyan, Afghanistan, explores the East-West connect within a more piercing and direct iconographic framework. In his reference to the ‘Quaida’, the first lesson of the Urdu primer being taught at madrassas, “Alif”, “Bay”, “Pay” (ABC), stands for “Aslaha” (ammunition), “Baarood” (gunpowder) – having replaced  “Aam” (mango), “Bakri” (goat), and so on –  of the past.  Khadim’s family, who still lives in Bamyan, says that their children will be killed, if they were to learn about apples and oranges. Similarly, Aisha’s video, Stitching, Unstitching (2005), shows two hands in two frames, one brown, embroidering a red rose; the other hand, white, simultaneously unstitching the same pattern.

Not to say that work cannot be reinterpreted in new contexts, Neo Miniature remains at the risk of being critically engaged with only at the level of the Diaspora. Hence the Western approach that places work from the South Asian Diasporic artists into one category leaves a narrow space for indigenous or local concerns to become relevant.⁷

The question of belonging or of containment, becomes relatively marginalized, if not irrelevant, its significance blurred in an environment that is increasingly under pressure from a fixation to fit into a ‘trans national’ mold that seeks conformity, uniformity and standardization, all in the name of ‘Development’ and ‘Globalization’; a constant and continuing negation of the indigenous context, which has raised issues such as: what is the ‘indigenous’, the ‘traditional’, the  ‘local’ or that which may appear to border on the ‘nationalistic’; a negation that has  altered the perceptions of the self towards issues of ‘authenticity’, thus informs the emerging dynamics of contemporary directions in art in Pakistan.