March 15, 2008

It was many months ago that I received an e-mail from Salma Tuqan of Art Dubai. Carefully and respectfully worded, it nevertheless conveyed the excitement of this young coordinator of Art Dubai’s Pakistan Pavilion. She was inviting me to curate an exhibition, which, unlike the art fair itself, would be a non-commercial exhibition space. I promised to consider it if certain basic ground rules could be established.

Over the next two months, I was convinced that Salma Tuqan was an unusually gifted young curator in her own right, who had taken the trouble to do her homework on Pakistani art. For a Palestinian art historian, this was commendable, and most beguiling. There was no way I could refuse the invitation. My respect for her vision deepened, as we steered one another over the highs and lows of putting together the Pakistan Pavilion. While mulling over thematic options which could define the cutting edge of Pakistani contemporary art practice, it became increasingly obvious that some sort of panoramic introduction is called for. The accompanying hazard was of course the possibility of a superficial skimming of the surface, or a roundup of well-known names which could result in an utterly predictable cocktail.

Another challenge was the location of the exhibition. The Madinaat Jumairah is an ornate complex of hotels, restaurants, boutiques and a convention centre. The major part of Art Dubai is taken up with commercial art galleries from all over the world, who will be showing off their stables of artists. These will be housed in the convention centre area in exhibition booths.

Art fairs are now an accepted way of bringing together the ‘art business’ around the world, rather like IT fairs or air shows! It is very much to do with showcasing artists who are represented by commercial galleries; their works are considered sound financial propositions. The Pakistan Pavilion is not part of this enterprise. It is a stand-alone space dedicated to Pakistan, the only country so honoured.

In the last two decades Pakistani art has unhurriedly unfolded on the international art circuit. “Movement” may not be the word to describe it, since its divergent practices and pathways cannot be conveniently categorised or ‘branded’ (an infuriating buzz word). Pakistanis as a whole are confronted by issues of internal conflict, international identity, stereotyping and impediments to travel. The dark green passport at any border or airport becomes a burden which has to be worked around. The carrier may therefore have to resort to spiritual travel rather than a physical one. Pakistani artists have been ruminating on some of these concerns through their work. Ideologies, icons and technologies can coalesce, fraternise or evaporate. The artist remains in constant negotiation with critical shifts in his or her multiple realities.

Reading Ziauddin Sardar’s Desperately Seeking Paradise helped to seize upon some of these predicaments. The book being a tongue-in-cheek, yet philosophical, exploration, of the actual and spiritual travels and travails of Muslims in today’s global culture.

The selection of artists for the Pakistan Pavilion was a difficult task. Pakistani art today is lively, brimming with ideas, offering a proliferation of mediums, idioms and styles. Eventually, in discussion with the coordinator, we chose to move away from a ‘white cube’ approach in order to reflect a more ‘expanded’ view.

Sardar’s text was a companion throughout this enterprise. As we zeroed in on the participating artists, I encouraged them to read the book. Naiza Khan called from Karachi in peals of laughter having just read Sardar’s description of a bunch of tableeghis (missionaries) knocking on the writer’s door in Hackney.

The other decision was regarding artists from the diaspora. In an increasingly mobile world, artists move residence frequently, both within the country and abroad. Some of these stays are short, others are for longer periods, both voluntary and involuntary. But always there seems to be a yearning for ‘home’ as identities become confusing.

Ali Raza went to the USA to study in the late ‘90s. Staying on to teach, he finally chose to return to Lahore in 2007, with his artist wife Samina Iqbal. Ali Raza noticed the change after 9/11, both in the US and back home. The omnipresence of the military and militarisation infuse his work, which earlier was more didactic. His mentor, Zahoorul Akhlaq, had been the touchstone for some of these works. The works in Desperately Seeking Paradise, however, are directly related to his experiences in Lahore. As he puts it, “I could not ignore the presence of gunmen everywhere. These armed guards make people feel safe in their homes and businesses, ironically evoking a sense of insecurity in me, because I don’t have a gun or a bodyguard!”

Faiza Butt is the other artist residing away from her beloved Lahore. With two infant children, the struggle to continue her studio practice in London has been most daunting. Returning home to Lahore this year, her visit coincided with Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. Deeply affected by the traumatic public aftermath, Faiza also dwelt upon the alarming intervention of weaponry in our world. Not surprisingly, her work is concerned with instruments of violence. Observing her children playing with toy guns, Faiza is aghast at the damage to young minds, bombarded with electronic games, animations, cartoons and comics all singing the same tune.

Durriya Kazi’s practice is often thought to be involved with hybrid visual icons in the metropolis. This has certainly been part of her practice, often in association with urban crafts persons. Parallel to this, she has been immersed in wider issues of the environment and human habitats. All this is the background for Kazi’s work in Desperately Seeking Paradise. The vulnerability of human flesh is hauntingly portrayed in her work ‘Witness’. Crying out against the killings in Iraq, Palestine, and elsewhere in our world, the artist struggles to gather these feelings into a poignant work. Flesh turns to dust, as does unfired clay, as the exhibition comes to a close.

The body has always been central to Naiza Khan’s work, both overtly and in more oblique ways. She was one of only three artists who were able to visit the site of the Pavilion space allocated for the Exhibition ahead of time. Standing in the space, Naiza vividly sensed the connections between land and water. Her ‘Heavenly Ornaments’ catalogue in April 2007 contained photographs of metal corsets and body armour submerged in the sea front around Karachi. Here then, was the possibility of using a still body of water as an exhibition space. There were already two ‘dhows’ anchored in the artificial lake in the exhibition area. ‘The Crossing’ is arguably the most ambitious work Naiza Khan has attempted in recent years. It refers also to that journey to Paradise, the promise of which is so alluring.

To quote Naiza: “Paradise was a motif deeply woven into culture and society, politics and art, Muslim and British. It was an ideal operating through the identities that formed my life. Paradise transcended and perhaps interconnected the worlds that were mine”

In this context, desire and paradise fuse as strivings become concretised but are also evasive, out of reach.
 

Desperately Seeking Paradise does not claim to represent Pakistani art in all its complexity or creative richness. The curatorial premise is fluid, never promising to deliver a capsule experience for viewers. It seeks, instead, to provoke, surprise and entice audiences to initiate conversations and enter into a dialogue with our art and artists. Curator Salima Hashmi of the Pakistan Pavilion at Art Dubai explains
 

Farida Batool’s work has often emerged from her activism and her teaching. The fearlessness with which she incorporates the lives of battered women, street fighting, and border conflict into her work made her an obvious choice for the show.

Anwar Saeed, one of our most reclusive artists, delves into his layered persona to construct complex narratives, magical and compelling. Multiple readings are possible in viewing these works, which retain their secrecy, rather like the artist himself.

Huma Mulji on the other hand has always dealt with tangible dreams. Having followed her career which commenced in Karachi, one is impressed by her honest questioning of all that happens around her, together with her own role as a player. Invited to think about both Dubai and the notion of ‘Seeking Paradise’, it became clear that the work would subvert the ‘surface’ of Dubai, i.e all that gleams is not gold. It was Huma Mulji, who paid tribute to the workers who built the National Gallery in Islamabad. Her installation was shoved into a corridor to make way for more ‘important’ artists in Islamabad. Their ‘chappals’ appear in “Desperately Seeking Paradise” as gilded treasures, together with the ‘naans’ in the suitcase titled “Shabbir”.

Mohammad Ali Talpur’s minimal meditative works seemed to be a perfect counterpoint to Huma Mulji’s verve and wit. The ‘essence’ is the line. As he puts it, “the act of repeatedly making lines is similar to being obsessed with achieving a perfect line”. His installation is a huge transparent cube, made up of 125 small cubes, each measuring 2 ft by 2 ft, with lines gliding across the surfaces, taking one on journeys never ending.

Rashid Rana and Imran Qureshi, both internationally established artists, are so dramatically opposed in their art practice that drawing them ‘in’ together was far too tempting an opportunity to pass up. In Rana, the 21st century is deceptively glossy, the ironical undercurrents play hide and seek with viewers. In Imran Qureshi’s work, history sets the context, the layers of which are then studiously peeled away to reveal the universalities of marks and cyphers.

Sophie Ernst is the ‘outsider’ in the show. She has traveled, lived and learnt what makes people ‘tick’ in Pakistan. In certain ways, a nomad herself, she traces the dreams of those who would wish themselves to be in the diaspora confusing this with a paradise, never to be gained.

‘Desperately Seeking Paradise’ does not claim to ‘represent’ Pakistani art in all its’ complexity or creative richness. The curatorial premise was fluid, never promising to deliver a ‘capsule’ experience for viewers. It seeks instead to provoke, surprise and entice audiences to initiate conversations and enter into dialogue with our art and our artists.
 

Yeh haath salaamat hain jab tak

One could not forget those who have come to work in paradise: the immigrant labour, whose toil makes magnificent buildings rise, roads widen and bridges proliferate. Saba Qizilbash, a Pakistani artist resident in Dubai, has been involved in community projects in Lahore, Delhi and the US. It was proposed that alongside the work of fine artists a community-based project should be taken up to widen the purpose of the whole exercise.

For the past six weeks Saba Qizilbash has been working with immigrant labourers, assisted by the fine art students at the American University, Dubai, teaching them the art and skills of photography. The labourers gave up their weekly holiday to learn to use digital cameras and to discover the finer points of landscape, portraiture and other forms of photography. Their work will hang alongside the artists’ whose work has travelled here from Lahore, Karachi, Europe, the UK and the US.

It is a modest tribute to those whose years of labour have made Dubai possible.—Salima Hashmi