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 craft1, 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 bujhki13, coverlets, and posh14, 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…
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…
When looking at the world in black and white takes a literal turn, and you soak your senses in the world of contradictions you find yourself amongst the works of Khalil Chishti and Adeel-uz Zafar. Works that defy gravity, intrigue…
When looking at the world in black and white takes a literal turn, and you soak your senses in the world of contradictions you find yourself amongst the works of Khalil Chishti and Adeel-uz Zafar. Works that defy gravity, intrigue…
Most contemporary buzz words including--- but not limited to--- decolonisation, heritage, and culture are applicable to the show Tigers and Dragons: India and Wales in Britain at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea, Wales. At this juncture, a liminal…
Ahmed Parvez was intensely devoted to his art, in fact there was nothing that was not intense about him. He had strong opinions and often disagreed with his peers. Compromise in life did not come easily to him either. His…
About two decades ago, during a visit to India, I found myself at an emporium in Udaipur, Rajasthan. The space was alive with colour and devotion—walls adorned with Pichwais and other forms of Krishna-inspired devotional art, while artisans worked in…
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