The post Pakistani Artists Condemn Vandalism first appeared on Indian Art News.

”Hanging Fire” introduces Pakistan’s vibrant contemporary art scene to America.

There are certain themes one expects to see in an overview of contemporary Pakistani art, like commentaries on politics, politics or perhaps … politics. The last large-scale show I’d seen of Pakistani art, in Dubai last year, focused on the infamous, highly militarized “Line of Control” that divides Pakistan from neighboring India.

“Hanging Fire: Contemporary Art from Pakistan,” the first large-scale museum exhibit of contemporary Pakistani art ever held in the U.S., is different–and subtle in its strength. The artwork on display deals with a wide range of issues, from gender and sexuality to the loss of cultural innocence that frequently comes with economic development. Most of it is stunning and crafted with the utmost artistic rigor.

With the comparatively high (and rising) international profile of contemporary Indian art, it’s surprising that Pakistan’s art scene hasn’t received more attention. The contemporary art circles in Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore in particular have been around longer than the country itself, which is only 62 years old. And the National College of Arts in Lahore, the nation’s premier art institution, has existed in one form or another since the late 1800s.

The National College of Arts, or NCA, leaves a huge imprint on “Hanging Fire”; the majority of artists featured in the show have some connection to the institution.

For example, Zahoor Ul-Akhlaq, the father of Pakistani contemporary art who passed away in 1999, graduated from the NCA in the ’60s and later taught there, mentoring many of the artists included in “Hanging Fire.” His paintings, “A Visit to the Inner Sanctum I-III,” open the exhibit. The 5-foot-tall canvases are ominous and smoky, layered with watery brush strokes of black acrylic paint. Ul-Akhlaq admired abstractionists like Mark Rothko, Josef Albers and Frank Stella, and their influence lurks throughout his somber paintings.

During his tenure as an NCA teacher, Ul-Ahklaq pushed to form the school’s karkhana–the department that trains students in the centuries-old practice of Mughal miniature painting. The department has since spawned a movement of its own called neo-miniaturism.

Neo-miniaturism has received much international attention, for good reason. Instead of being stifled by the rigorous practice–creating surfaces bound by wheat glue and fashioning paintbrushes from single strands of squirrel hair–these artists put the old methods to use in ways that Shah Jahan (the Mughal ruler who fueled the trend–and also commissioned the Taj Mahal) would have commended.

For instance, Mahreen Zuberi uses defined shapes and flat negative spaces to create sexually charged pop paintings of dental gloves prying open a pair of grinning lips and teeth. Imran Qureshi applies the medium’s intricate brushwork in the large-scale trompe d’oeil wall paintings he made specifically for this show. Qureshi’s installation of painted vines pouring out of the Asia Society’s second-floor window have such delicate, wispy petals that it almost looks like their branches are growing eyelashes. Faiza Butt applies tiny pointillist dots on to polyester film when she fashions her dreamlike portraits of devout young Pakistani men surrounded by banal, everyday items like clothes irons and hairdryers.

But for all the media exposure they get, the neo-miniaturists are not the best-selling Pakistani artists at auction.That distinction goes to Rashid Rana.

Rana’s work is always a crowd-pleaser, with its slick, if slightly obvious, trickery. In “Red Carpet I,” on display here, he presents what looks like a giant photo print of traditional Balochi woven rug. Only when examined at pointblank is the viewer able to see that Rana’s “carpet” is made of thousands of tiny images, amalgamated Chuck Close-style. These smaller photos depict bloody scenes from a local slaughterhouse that Rana took on the day of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination.

The female artists in “Hanging Fire” had the freshest, most playful work, Hamra Abbas’ “Ride II” is a giant, cherry-red fiberglass winged horse mounted on a rocking horse’s wooden base. But don’t call it Pegasus: Abbas was inspired by folklore of the Buraq, the prophet Muhammed’s steed, which was believed to have a woman’s head. “Ride II” looks like an overgrown Sphinx toy with its mysterious expression and sleek animal body. It revels in religious belief while simultaneously questioning it.

A rush of anxiety accompanies other female sculptor Huma Mulji’s “High Rise: Lake City Drive.” The artist has perched an entire, very frightened-looking taxidermy water buffalo atop of an ersatz–and rather slim–Greek column. “High Rise” reflects upon contemporary Pakistan’s haphazard union of development with rural life: Both of its components–a water buffalo and fake classical architecture–are daily sights in the country.

This is what, in the end, makes “Hanging Fire” so extraordinary–and vital. The exhibition goes beyond mere politics to present a more complete view of Pakistan virtually unknown to Americans. The Pakistan of “Hanging Fire” is a place where faith is observed but also critiqued, where artistic traditions are not an end unto themselves but tools that artists use to serve their imaginations. While Pakistan no doubt has its troubles, nurturing a vibrant art scene surely isn’t one of them.

Sarah Wolff is a freelance journalist who specializes in the art and culture of the Near and Middle East.

The post Burning Down The (Art) House first appeared on Indian Art News.

For Indians unfamiliar with the fraternity of artists in Pakistan, master modernist Jamil Naqsh can be best described as Pakistan’s M.F. Husain – a man who lives by his art and on his own terms.

India-born Naqsh, Pakistan’s leading modern artist, who leads a reclusive life in London, will host his first-ever solo show in the capital Sep 15 at the Alliance Francaise – exhibiting a cache of 40 paintings.

The artist’s ties with India are unbreakable. “I always dreamt of being in Shantiniketan,” Naqsh told IANS in an email interview.

Naqsh was a boy when he left Kirana on the banks of the river Yamuna near Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh, where he was born in 1938.

But his early boyhood memories of Kirana, art analysts believe, never deserted him. It seeped into his work, imbuing them with nostalgia and a certain amount of winsome poignancy though he denies that childhood had a part to play.

“Childhood was nothing; I have my own genetic order. I am doing what I am programmed to do and think,” he said.

Naqsh relates to the Kirana of his childhood on a personal level.

“For me, my father and my house in Kirana were the nucleus of my life and keeps on spreading. I regret that I did not get a chance to look after him and make him proud of myself. And I worked even harder and was more careful with my life because of the insecurity,” he said.

Naqsh was a free spirit – who formed definite opinions about life and art early in life. In his early teens, he travelled to Chittagong, Kolkata and Colombo and picked up a medley of influences along the way that had a profound impression on his art.

As a student at the Mayo School of Art in 1953, he trained in modern art but was keen to learn the subtle dexterity and intricate craft of Indian miniature paintings.

“The principal of Mayo School of Art, Spading Field, introduced me to Ustad Mohammed Sharif as a very special student. And gave me a two-year scholarship.

“Ustad Sharif was a very fine miniaturist, very dedicated and down-to-earth. He taught me all the techniques of miniatures and secrets on oath too. He tried to groom me to take his place,” Naqsh recalled.

Contrary to notions held by a section of art researchers and critics, Naqsh did not learn Mughal miniatures. “I learnt only Indian miniature paintings. I was interested in the Jain art of Rajasthan, especially the Bundi School,” the artist said.

His brush with Indian miniatures strengthened his ties with his parent country and his love for the genre. “There will always be a market for Indian miniatures and this country will always have miniature artists, unlike several countries where the art of painting miniatures is disappearing,” Naqsh said.

The media-shy artist, whose works have been panned in his home country, says he is never alone. His art and companion keep him company.

“I am never alone. My companion, Najmi Sura, is always with me and I have the company of great painters and great men of the past and present. Even I know that they are going to prove the big bang. And everybody has limited time. I cannot waste my time; I am not a recluse,” the artist said.

Naqsh paints the people he loves and his intimate thoughts and convictions. Women, pigeons and sometimes horses and children recur in his works. Critics say Najmi Sura inspires the women on his canvases.

Naqsh is also an accomplished calligrapher – an art that he picked up as a boy. The genre influenced his “Modern Manuscripts Series”, in which he redefined mass as a complex linear labyrinth. The artist, since his early days, was obsessed with lines.

Naqsh likes to describe himself as a painter who is rooted in the 21st century. “I am neither conceptualist or modern. The conceptualists exist everywhere and in every time, even when they broke the nose of Michealangelo’s sculpture. The problem is that Marcel Duchamp, the French surrealist painter, should have given a name to this type of activity. Art is art without another name – only it’s good or bad.”

The artist’s message to the burgeoning population of contemporary artists in India and Pakistan is simple.

“Be proud that we have such a rich past which is very different from other civilisations. And we all have our own pasts of the collective past.”

The post Top Pakistani artist to hold exhibition in Delhi first appeared on Indian Art News.