Pakistan trumped Trump last week. By holding three eye-catching events last week showcasing Pakistan’s contemporary art scene, expat Pakistanis got an opportunity to pay attention to something other than the presidential race. Donald Trump should have come to at least one of them. He would have shed many of his prejudices about Muslims, about modern Pakistan and, in fact, about everything east of Manhattan.
The first event took place In Frieze, NY, where a booth had been dedicated by the Javery Art Gallery to the late, achingly talented Zahoor ul Ahklaq. The same week, Rashid Rana spoke twice - at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and in Washington DC at a talk organised jointly by the World Bank Art Program and the World Bank Pakistan Staff Association. The crescendo to this trinity of events was Lahore Literary Festival’s programme held at the Asia Society in New York. Expat Pakistanis demonstrated that their wallets lie in the same place as their hearts. The LLF in NY was a sellout and several panels ended with standing ovations.
'My East is Your West' - a work by Rashid Rana, 2015 - Photo credits - Mark Blower
"Pakistan? Isn't that where they shoot girls in the head for going to school?"
No country can have enough of patriotism, and no country needs a dose as often as Pakistan does. I was reminded of this recently as my eleven-year-old daughter came home from school, upset after she told someone she came from Pakistan.
“Isn’t that where they shoot girls in the head for going to school?”
Such a question was to he expected from another eleven-year-old, who learned about Pakistan from a junior version of Malala Yusufzai’s autobiography.
I never thought I would ever need to explain to her what I took for granted - that her (and my) Pakistan was a composite, vibrant society, possessing cultural depth, irresistible food and of course, a brilliantly creative art scene.
Audiences in the US have shown great interest in contemporary Pakistani art and culture
Nothing could have underscored this better than the presentation of the Lahore Biennale Foundation and its activities by Qudsia Rahim and Rashid Rana Rashid Rana is the Artistic Director of the Lahore Biennale (our country’s first). A Biennale (in case you need to be told) is where exhibits are displayed for art’s sake rather than for sale). It provides every two years an opportunity to see what has been and is being done before collectors get to it.
Of late, art fairs, like LitFests, have proliferated. Recent ones have been in Cochin in South India and the recently held Dhaka Art Summit. A curator revealed that she had been approached by people from Lebanon, Nepal and Kazakhstan. Clearly, Pakistanis are not the only ones who want or need to revamp the international perception of themselves.
Rashid Rana, Artistic Director at the Lahore Biennale Foundation
An installation in Lahore's Istanbul Chowk
The Lahore Biennale Foundation was set up as a non-profit organisation a couple of years ago, and has been working on smaller projects, such as the improvement of the Mayo Hospital Cancer ward in Lahore, or by commissioning artists to provide benches in the beautiful but dilapidated Lahore railway station. Through these unobtrusive gestures, art is being integrated in unexpected settings. Such projects vary in size and scale, ranging from walls and benches to the larger installation conceived with Rashid Rana for the Venice Biennale last year. That particular collaboration conjoined Shilpa Gupta from India and Rashid Rana from Pakistan. Their installation was placed in a bustling commercial zone of Lahore - Liberty Market. Titled “My East your West”, it was critically acclaimed and attracted many curious visitors.
Rana’s concept for the Lahore Biennale, scheduled to run for seven weeks through November and December 2017, is to mark a “Biennale without Walls”. The idea is to profile the city and showcase it through artistic collaboration, whether of Pakistani artists or those coming to Lahore.
Pakistani artists have worked on bringing art to the masses using the Lahore railway station as a venue
Rashid Rana sees Lahore not as a site but as a medium with which to experiment
In other cities like Dubai, this has often resulted in art tourism, where the world of art collectors, curators and those in the business descend on the city and flock from venue to venue in buses. In others like Istanbul, the city comes to life with different venues. Lahore has no shortage of sites and monuments which artists could experiment with. Rana’s curatorial premise is ambitious - to engage with the inhabitants of Lahore but to see the city not as a site but as a medium with which to experiment through producing, exhibiting and conceptualising art. Rana mentioned a third alternative space “between academia and contemporary art emerging from the region”. The team has their work cut out for them - to bring art beyond the traditional gallery context is no mean feat. Organising public installations when water and power are not guaranteed seems like a tough call, let alone the logistical challenges of organising a large-scale event with international crowds and the related security concerns. That aside, it is laudable that people like those at the LBF should strive to reclaim the space for art in our society and keep trying to do so, in the absence of large-scale public funding.
The Lahore Biennale Foundation had an impressive package of materials, with modern posters of Lahore and beautifully produced postcards which profiled the “DekhoLahore” project, which was based on an open call for photographs of Lahore. It was quickly appropriated by my daughter. She is now proudly taking it to school to show her peers another side of Pakistan, through its beautiful art and photographs. In a small way, that marks the potential power of art for social good and how it can help create a more nuanced picture of Pakistan, while showcasing its limitless creativity and talent. Who needs Trump Towers as a venue when you have Lahore?
