“First, you must answer the question: What can art serve here and now? Then you criticize according to whether the works in question serve that purpose or not”. ¹

Critic John Berger wrote these words to contextualize art in relevant socio-cultural backdrops. While Berger considers individual works of art primarily through their permanence or ephemerality and their messaging, contemporary exhibitions operate on similar multifaceted levels: exploring the function of art within society, as well as navigating local, international, and institutional networks. I would like to extend Berger’s inquiry to the realm of the exhibition. How can global surveys foster a closer connection between spectators and artworks, especially in this ironic era when visa restrictions, travel costs, work-life-family commitments, and hefty entry fee still prevent audiences from visiting brick-and-mortar museums? How neutral or political should surveys be? Most importantly, who do surveys serve now, anyway?

I am certainly not the first to think about the rewards and pitfalls of exhibitions that lump lots of materials under one sweeping title. Critics like Jerry Saltz³ and Hal Foster⁴ have questioned the notion of big art exhibitions as entertaining spectacles, where breadth often overshadows critical depth. Yet, surveys do possess a peculiar kind of magic, don’t they? They sweep you off your feet with alluring presentations of decades, maybe even centuries worth of art history, right within your grasp— figuratively.

A few months ago, I was swept off my feet. After much deliberation, I made the decision to dip into my hard-earned savings to fly and see Manzar: Art and Architecture of Pakistan From 1940s to Today at the National Museum of Qatar, so that I could be in the midst of the art I had long committed myself to out of love. Experiencing reproductions in art books is one thing, but witnessing masterpieces by legendary artists such as the Chughtais and Aghas in person is an unforgettable event. I absorbed and ruminated, leaving satisfied with the show’s aesthetics and dissatisfied with its contradictions.

To borrow critic Geeta Kapur’s words, Manzar’s greatest strength is its transnational public sphere⁵. I observed local and international visitors examining the artworks with evident curiosity, posing questions in a variety of languages—Urdu, Punjabi, Hindi, English, and Arabic. The exhibition’s impressive spatial design and qualitative bandwidth must have been a formidable feat for the curating team comprising Caroline Hancock, Aurélien Lemonier, Zarmeene Shah, exhibition designer Raza Ali Dada and researcher Noor Butt. At its heart lies Pakistan’s vibrant 75-plus-year history of art and architecture which has flourished through notable media-based and conceptual experiments and narratives that converse with modern, traditional, and contemporary inquiries.

Unsurprisingly, it’s not that simple. Questions like “What is Pakistani art?” and “When does art originate as Pakistani?” continue to puzzle us. Art historian Akbar Naqvi arguably considers the beginning of Pakistani art post Partition in 1948, but acknowledges that the history of the country “is much older than its age because it begins with the first settlement of Muslims in what the Arabs called Al Hind or the Indian subcontinent”.⁶ In the exhibition catalog, also curated by the same team of curators, Hancock posits a similar quandary and proposes a solution.: “We sought to recount an expansive notion of this place, not limited by drawn and imposed borders, but true to the porosity and transnational interconnections of cultural expressions”. ⁷ The show includes some works produced in Mughal India, which to me, are attempts at countering reductive tokenization of a post Partition Pakistani identity in art. Additionally, the displays also features works by renowned modern Indian artists like F.N. Souza and M.F. Husain, among others, who showcased their art at Ali Imam’s Indus Art Gallery in Karachi in 1989 and 1992 respectively.

Welcomed by Ali Kazim’s The Conference of Birds (2019) at the gallery doors, I stepped into the first section titled ‘Setting the Stage’, followed by ‘Formalist Experiments’ which showcased works by pre-Partition artists such as Ustad Allah Buksh and Abdur Rahman Chughtai. The exhibition progresses through various sections highlighting Pakistani artists active from the 1950s to the 1980s, such as Sadequain, Zubeida Agha, Ismail Gulgee, and Ahmed Pervez among others. Overall, the presentation spans 200 artworks arranged across 11 sections that are initially chronological but become increasingly nonlinear as the narrative unfolds—extending into an outdoor courtyard, creating a rich, layered experience.

Sectional curation and succinct wall texts enhance the spatial experience of the exhibition and assist audiences in navigating the diverse array of artworks. However, this approach can also be problematic. Relying heavily on stylistic labels—such as ‘Experiments in Formalism’, ‘Abstraction and Calligraphy’, ‘Neo-Miniature, and ‘Subjective Figuration’—risks reducing Pakistani artists, possessing rich histories of land and medium, to narrow categories. After all, all art is inherently subjective and such labels can obscure the complexity and depth of these artists’ practices. Manzar is cognizant of this trap. It tries to carefully disrupt chronological flows in multiple sections. For example, the exhibition opens with Kazim’s contemporary work followed by a display of pre-Partition artworks. ‘Place and Displacement’ focus on Partition and present works created between 1948 and 2016.  Yet, the same strategy also shoehorns artworks under stylistic umbrellas, thus relying on the very script it is trying to subvert.

In ‘Neo Miniature’, the disrupting strategy nearly falters. Large works by artists including Aisha Khalid, Shahzia Sikander and Rashid Rana are juxtaposed with five smaller Mughal folios. As a lecturer of historical illuminated manuscripts, to say that I am thrilled to view these works is an understatement. Yet, I am disturbed— these folios were once parts of whole historical manuscripts that have been torn apart by colonizing forces and collection-hungry global art institutions. I also counted the number of artists: nine in total, with seventeen artworks—including three works located in other areas or outdoors. Sikander and Qureshi alone account for five and three, respectively. Why was it deemed necessary to omit several other artists—lesser known, emerging, or mid-career practitioners working without the support of established networks—to prioritize the historical-contemporary juxtaposition? To effectively showcase how Pakistani neo-miniaturists have contemporized the traditional genre, it might be worthwhile to consider a dedicated show in the future, either as a continuation of this project or as part of a larger narrative. Similar issues with allocation of space arise in the ‘Urban Vernacular’ segment and the courtyard, where large areas are dedicated to Adeela Suleman’s three multi-part works and Amin Gulgee’s seven-part installation, Memory Garden.

Manzar makes no attempt to engage with the notion of promising but lesser-known artists. Every Pakistani (or non-Pakistani) artist in the show, whether from mainstream cities or provincial communities, is already internationally accepted, or acclaimed, whichever way you choose to view it, with several years’ worth of exhibition histories. By prioritizing works of global renown and high appeal, Manzar aims to guarantee five-star reviews from its viewers. Meanwhile, countless creative voices lacking the privilege of funding and/or networking with prominent art schools, curators, and galleries continue to exist on the periphery.

The exhibition also forefronts Pakistan’s architectural history. Works of five pivotal architects: Yasmeen Lari, Habib Fida Ali, Kamil Khan Mumtaz, Arif Hassan, and Nayyer Ali Dada are highlighted in ‘Regionalism in Debate’.  However, Lemonier lays out the problems of presenting on architecture in the catalog. About any written histories and archives, he notes: “Was there space to add to and update it? What documentary resources were available and how should we present them? Which body of work should we reference and interrogate? How could we, on an intellectual level, avoid the traditional pitfalls of schematism or simplistic categorization?”⁸

To address Lemonier’s concern, the curatorial team appropriately developed their own documentation, which exposed a deeper crisis of development: post-Partition architecture lies at the heart of longstanding tensions between tradition, modern approaches, identity, and progress. The same spirit also carries into the elegant archival displays of posters and prints concerning the pivotal efforts of the organization Women Actions Forum and the contemporary movement Aurat March, indicating the proliferation of women centered works and activism since the 80s.

Manzar fittingly installs several sculptures throughout the galleries, including works by Shahid Sajjad, Khadim Ali, and Meher Afroz, but after three hours of back-and-forth I am still surprised that ceramics and printmaking are absent from the show. Their exclusion is acknowledged only in the catalog, alongside brief mentions of pioneering studio ceramists like Sheherezade Alam and Salahuddin Mian, and nothing more. Ceramics often pose challenges for international exhibitions due to their association with craft and utility objects. Euro-centric hierarchical views perpetuated by Hegelian and Kantian philosophies consider ceramics as a decorative antithesis of so-called high art, favoring materials like oil paints, canvases, marbles and bronzes over clay, wood, plaster, and watercolors. Modern critics like Clement Greenberg and Clive Bell also ignore the emotional and formal depths offered by ceramics.⁹

However, art history scholarship has come a long way. These presumptuous biases have been the subject of several criticisms. Zarmeene Shah herself has authored a jargon-free essay I often assign to my undergraduate students, titled ‘Fields of Possibility in Contemporary Ceramic Art’. She writes, “In Pakistan then, as well as globally, ceramics seemed to have re-emerged as a sculptural medium in its own right, capable of expanding and moving beyond its traditional scope and into a contemporary world of art and design”. ¹⁰ Because ceramics are integral to Pakistani craft, they open a Pandora’s box of conundrums like these: Which ceramics should be included or omitted? Should we then present on craft, too? Regional or urban? Is craft Art? Additionally, handling ceramics can be a logistical nightmare. These dilemmas might have been avoided by displaying perhaps smaller-sized studio ceramics that embody new ways of thinking and creating in art, and I am not advocating solely for Alam or Mian, but other artists like Riffat Alvi, Nabahat Lotia, and Shazia Zuberi, who otherwise do not make it into the exhibition’s scope.

Manzar is neither critical nor revisionist, but leans toward a bold, expansionist framework. Its remarkable presentation extrapolates the country’s politically charged architecture and cultural memory displayed under glass, attempting to contextualize the enigmas it recognizes. Because it is a celebratory survey that holistically acknowledges nuances—though it omits two major genres—its fragmentations tend to reduce artists to singular aspects. The issue does not stem from sectional divides per se—whether chronological or thematic; in fact, focused exhibitions often reveal more. Instead, the problem lies in how national art legacies become confined within survey formats that require strict classifications.

For instance, in ‘New Languages’, the wall text suggests that “Rasheed Araeen’s work would stand as exemplary in the formation of minimalist concerns in Pakistani art, particularly in the context of sculpture”. An incredibly gifted artist, Araeen has lived and exhibited in the UK for the last sixty years and only occasionally shows in Pakistan. How much of his art can be considered Pakistani or British, Islamic, or transnational? Similarly, ‘Urban Vernacular’ displays Huma Bhabha’s fantastic sculpture, The Orientalist (2007). Bhabha has lived and worked in the US since 1981. While Manzar thoughtfully notes each artist’s birthplace and their current locales of practice, to me, long held transnational practices suggest more global identities than strictly Pakistani.

Section ‘Abstraction and Calligraphy’ emphasizes Sadequain and Gulgee’s calligraphy-based work, which forms just one aspect of their highly prolific and extensively networked careers. It is also unlikely that any wall text or survey exhibition can fully capture the myriad styles of such versatile artists. Consequently, we are left with the very tokenism the show seeks to challenge—larger-than-life artist names designed in sections aimed at boosting audience numbers and glorifying global press coverage. This is, perhaps inevitably, one of the greatest pitfalls of survey exhibitions.

Sharing its title with the exhibition, Manzar’s accompanying catalog features a reprint of art historian Akbar Naqvi’s introduction from Image and Identity: Fifty Years of Painting and Sculpture in Pakistan, new essays, and several images. If it serves as a well-organized record of the exhibition itself, along with the motivations and tribulations of the organizing teams, then the book successfully accomplishes its purpose. For other goals concerning detailed entanglements between materiality, material and artisanal histories, and gendered economics of artmaking, the publication is a missed opportunity that favors the inclusion of well-known writers over fresh perspectives.

Stimulating essays explore  histories of Partition, architecture, and Karachi’s “ephemeral” rivers, where else others unfortunately reinforce existing narratives already covered macroscopically in several similar books like Hanging Fire: Contemporary Art from Pakistan: Asia Society Museum (2009), Memory, Metaphor, Mutations: Oxford University Press (2007), The Eye Still Seeks: Penguin Studio (2015), indie and institutionally published artist monographs, and more. An essay on the practice of miniature painting rehashes the teaching history of the genre which has been chalked out previously, most notably by Salima Hashmi in her essay ‘Radicalizing Tradition’ (2001), republished in Contemporary Art in Asia: A Critical Reader (2011). The decision to include essays on Sadequain and Zahoor-ul-Akhlaque over other lesser published but mighty practices is also debatable, considering that these artists have already been written about in multiple publications. The book may be aimed at new international readers and viewers of Pakistani art, but I cannot shake off the feeling that we have already been there.

What bothered me the most was the subtle favoring of one public art initiative over the other. A line in an essay on art institutional history reads, “The Karachi Biennale, and the more ambitious Lahore Biennale (with its robust academic forum), present international-level curated events and public art projects transforming both cities into experiential cultural encounters……”. Whatever became of line edits?

Manzar offers many rewarding lessons. Its sensitively curated splendid displays of trailblazing artworks and archives often tucked away in private collections beyond the reach of the public and interested researchers, provide considerable inspirations for future exhibitions and curators. But behind every global, sweep-you-off-your-feet kind of exhibition is a museum boosting its collections and doubling up on its savvy acquisitions. The organizing Qatari museums have strategized to strengthen their holdings and visibility through this exhibition. While Pakistani government officials and several renowned exhibiting artists attended the opening, only a few writers and emerging researchers outside the usual institutional circles were engaged. As much as this survey benefits global institutions and contemporary artists revered in local art scenes, there are other approaches to elevate Pakistani art on the international stage—without risking oversimplification. Would it then make sense to move beyond broad surveys? Absolutely. Decade-specific exhibitions that explore cultural, colonial, and decolonialnetworks, as well as standalone shows engaging with politics, gender, socioeconomics, and aesthetics through diverse artist trajectories, could provide more comprehensive perspectives. After all, Pakistani art is not merely a checklist— it is a continuous, urgent, layered, and self-critical narrative.

‘Manzar: Art and Architecture of Pakistan From 1940s to Today’ is presented by the future Art Mil Museum at The National Museum of Qatar, Doha, and is curated by Caroline Hancock, Aurélien Lemonier and Zarmeene Shah. It ran between November 1 2024 to 31 January, 2025.

Title Image: Gallery Installation View, NEW LANGUAGES (front to back): Zahoor ul Akhlaq, Untitled (1975), 15 steel pyramids, Courtesy of Taimur Hassan Collection.

All images are courtesy of Art Mil Museum and National Museum of Qatar.

Bibliography

Berger, John. Selected Essays. Edited by Geoff Dyer, Vintage Books: New York, 2003.
Foster, Hal. “Exhibitionists” in London Review of Books, Vol 37, No 11, 2015.
Kapur, Geeta. “Curating Across Agnostic Worlds,” in Critical Collective, n.d.
Hancock, Caroline. “The Makings of Manzar,” in Manzar: Art and Architecture from Pakistan 1940s to Today, Qatar Museums: Qatar, 2024-25.
Lemonier, Aurélien, “The Pakistani Debate on Regionalism,” in Manzar: Art and Architecture from Pakistan 1940s to Today, Qatar Museums: Qatar, 2024-25.
Naqvi, Akbar. “Introduction,” in Image and Identity: Fifty Years of Painting and Sculpture in Pakistan, OUP: 1998.
Saltz, Jerry. “It’s Going to be Huge,” in New York Magazine, 2012.
Shah, Zarmeene. “Fields of Possibility in Contemporary Ceramic Art,” in Beyond the Glaze: Contemporary Ceramics of Pakistan, Furqan Ahmed Collection: Karachi, 2019.