NEW YORK, Oct 18: An exhibition of paintings by six contemporary artists of Pakistan opened in Connecticut’s Aldrich Contemporary Art museum this week. The exhibition, ‘Karkhana’, is a creative experiment by Mohammed Imran Qureshi who secured collaboration of six contemporaries in the miniature art field to work together.

It features a series of works by Aisha Khalid, Hasnat Mehmood, Mohammad Imran Qureshi, Nusra Latif Qureshi, Talha Rathore and Saira Wasim.

Karkhana displays 12 miniature paintings and five additional paintings by each of the six artists.

A large number of American art lovers turned up at the opening, and at a seminar the artists were asked to give their impressions and thoughts on the experiment and were grilled about their political views and bold experiment.

When an audience member asked the artists whether they feared for their safety in Pakistan since their work was critical of extremists and the establishment, artist Nusra Latif, who lives in Australia, responded: “I feel more safe in Pakistan than here (United States).”

Mr Qureshi responded by saying that a painting by Saira Wasim wherein she evoked an image of Osama bin Laden in the context of the global war on terror was not put on display, perhaps due to the fear that it could provoke a controversy here.

This exhibition will travel to The Asian Art Museum in San Francisco from August 4 through November 5, 2006, and Asia Society, New York, in 2007.