Editor – Sarah Wolff
”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.
