SPEAk

y u Hea r Me
T
heRefore w Ae
r
Curatorial Statement:
When one speaks, it is always with the expectation that one
will be heard, whether the addressee is the self, another or a
community. This speech act originates in subjectivity, but
requires firstly the objectification of the speaking self and
then the subsequent springing up of a set of linguistic and
cultural responses that, in its most simple way, can be
called communication and which, ideally, becomes a mark of
harmonised social grouping.

Speech acts are of course not just verbal arrangements but

include a wide range of signifying behaviors. In 'Revolution
In Poetic Language', Julia Kristeva, renowned linguist,
psychoanalyst and author, accords art, poetry, music and
literature great sociological importance as functions of the
psychological Chora, which she describes by way of the
nexus of the individual and social environment, and which is
taken to be the optimal site of symbolic ordering.

Every living moment is rife with meaning, we are immersed

in a fabulous welter of visuality, ritual and communication,
and while much of this wealth of signification passes as
ordinary reality to the majority, it is a recognition of the
idiosyncratic ability to note, to capture and to bring to
objectification matters of sociability that has led the curator
of the exhibition to choose this particular set of contributors.
Ali Khan
Statement

I am continually exposed to new materials in

my profession as an interior designer, and
these help me envisage and formulate
different forms of visuality.

The mix of introspection, found- materials

and reflections on human communication
have resulted in an extreme abstraction of
the human head, and combined with
elements that have sonic and visual
properties (bells, light- bulbs etc.), the
objects have developed into contemporary
totemic masks.
100 Eyes
Wood Brass Metal Glass
Musical Sightings Table
Wood Brass Metal Glass
Musical Silence
Wood Brass Metal Glass
Machismo
Wood Brass Metal Glass
Kiss
Wood Brass Metal Glass
Haider Ali Jan
Statement

My work references images in popular culture,

Photo-journalism, cinema and television. Through such
media as digital animation, projections, paintings, I
re-contextualize and distill these iconic images to their
most essential form. By doing so, my work communicates
the symbolic power these images have on the collective
psyche and underscores a keen understanding of how
images shape our experience and memory of events. By
working with found, images, videos and clippings, I mold
the narrative to generate another layer of meaning by
hiding, skipping and reinforcing elements by choice,
which alters the intent of the original, thus through my
work I create a layer on top of an already existing layer of
film or a photograph. The renderings I use in my work
flatten the images. The effect that this has on the
film/images is that they become fictionalize and not the
pure evidence of an event.

The translation from a photographic image to a drawing,

there is a dramatic reduction of visual information but
what is gained is symbolic image content. Drawing an
object for me is equal to writing a text. If I draw an image
of a house, it’s equal to spelling the word H-O-U-S-E. The
letter house is a combination of alphabets that gives
meaning to houses in general. In the same way the
drawing of a house, which is simply a combination of
graphic symbols, gives symbolic image to this other
image of a house that exists in this 3 dimensional world.
This power of graphic symbols is something that I am
interested in the type of animations and the drawings that
I make.
Wake up (Edition: 1 of 5)
20 x 26 inches
Digital Print on Paper
Posing (Edition: 1 of 5)
20 x 26.5 inches
Digital Print on Paper
House (Edition: 1 of 5)
20 x 22 inches
Digital Print on Paper
Fate (Edition: 1 of 5)
20 x 27.5 inches
Digital Print on Paper
Couple (Edition: 1 of 5)
18 x 27.5 inches
Digital Print on Paper
Naila Mahmood &
Nasra Omar
 Statement

Naila Mahmood is a Karachi based visual artist, writer and

documentary photographer. She teaches at the Indus
Valley School of Art and Architecture and is the Director
of the Vasl Artists Association. Her work revolves around
the complexities of urban spaces. She also does research
based photographic projects. Her work has been shown
nationally and internationally in Pakistan, USA, India,
Dubai, Germany and England.

Statement

Nasra Omer is a Karachi based Textile Designer. She is an

alumnus of National College of Arts, Lahore. As a textile
artist, she has extensive experience in weaving, dying and
printing techniques and combines these in her work with
new synergy. For the past thirty years, she has run a
textile business under Perahan.

The Phoenix May Not Rise Again

All fecundity wilts in the noon that’s so sweltering, lifeless

Licks away each one of the walls, the bane of loneliness
On the horizon boosting, abating, rising and falling
Remains the murky wave, like fog, of vapid pain and stress
And under such a fog dwells the dark city of lights
Faiz Ahmed Faiz
O City of Lights! Aey Roshnion ke Sheher!
Montgomery Jail, April 1954
The Phoenix May Not Rise Again
60 x 42 inches
Mixed Media on Digital Print
Paul Mehdi Rizvi
Statement

Sarfaroshi Ki Tammanna

In a close reading of Julia Kristeva’s article titled

‘Revolution In Poetic Language’1 and in fact with a direct
appropriation of some of its’ elements, the exhibited work
uses poetry and text along with canvas-based and
audio-visual elements in order to create an event.

The title is borrowed from a famous patriotic poem written

in Urdu by Bismil Azimabadi of Patna in 1921 and while
the original poem is a socio-political call to action, I have
raided the interior of the poem and shifted the locale to a
specifically aesthetic context not just in order to cross the
boundaries of using canonical artist’s materials, but more
importantly, to explore and demonstrate the link between
supposedly non-verbal expression and the written word.

Both Husserlian phenomenology and Structuralism, the

foundations on which our thinking about contemporary art
must stand, extend the narrow remit of Expression and
initiate a discourse in which Objectification is a stronger
term and a methodology that can be deployed to
establish a visuality that experiments with putting up a
widened range of components for the viewer to
experience.

Thus, one might say in an existential sense, the phrase

‘together we are’ takes on it’s full value, a situation in
which artist, gallery and viewer become a complete and
complex site of presentation, recognition and
consequence, the taking-place of an exhibition.
Sarfaroshi ki Tammanna
60 x 42 inches
Mix Media Metal, Plastics on prepared Cloth on Canvas
Eye and Cobalt Silk
60 x 42 inches
Mixed Media with Metal and Silk on Canvas
A Very Chinese Revolution
60 x 42 inches
Mix Media with Plastic on Canvas
Doctor Fraud’s Office
60 x 42 inches
Mix Media on Canvas
Desiring Mechanism
60 x 42 inches
Mixed Media with Metal on Canvas
Art is Murder
variable dimensions
Mutlimedia Installation
Roohi Ahmed
Statement

“For groups, as well as individuals, life itself means to

separate and to be reunited, to change form and
condition, to die and to be reborn. It is to act and to
cease, to wait and rest, and then to begin acting again,
but in a different way. And there are always new
thresholds to cross: the threshold of summer and
winter, of a season or a year, of a month or a night, the
threshold of birth, adolescence, maturity and old age;
the threshold of death and that of the afterlife-for those
who believe in it.”

Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, 1960, p.189

Chrysalis 1
21 x 30 inches
Digital Prints on Canvas
Chrysalis 2
21 x 30 inches
Digital Prints on Canvas
Chrysalis 3
21 x 30 inches
Digital Prints on Canvas
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