Artists featured in the exhibition include Hamra Abbas, Zahoor ul Akhlaq, Faiza Butt, Noor Ali Chagani, Ali Kazim, Aisha Khalid, Rehana Mangi, Hasnat Mehmood, Imran Qureshi, Nusra Latif Qureshi, Rashid Rana, Anwar Shemza and Muhammad Zeeshan.

How do you see your role as a curator? What objectives did you keep in mind while framing this collection?

For me, art is a carrier of ideas and an exhibition is one way that knowledge is produced through creating a framework around the ideas embedded in art works. It is akin to the publishing of a book or a panel discussion around a given theme or topic. In that context, I see the job of the curator as analogous to that of an editor or a moderator in a series of critical conversations. It is a creative role in as much as the choice of whom you invite and how you juxtapose different points of view to create new meanings.

This expanded and updated version of 'Beyond the page' builds from an exhibition I curated in 2006 for Manchester Art Gallery and Asia House in the UK. Since that point, I have had the opportunity to reflect on the feedback of artists and critics and become familiar with newer (and indeed some older) artists, whose work is significant in the consideration of the idea of the miniature as an attitude.

In developing this new version of the exhibition, we were trying to add new layers to the mix work produced in the last few years that has advanced the notion of what miniature has become, as well as historic work by artists such as Anwar Jalal Shemza, who studied at what used to be the Mayo College (now the NCA) in the 1940s and carried his miniature lessons with him right until his death in 1985. So we have moved from showing the work of eight artists in 2006 to the work of 13 artists in the show at Pasadena.

What do you mean by the 'miniature as attitude in contemporary art'?

Through this exhibition we argue that the miniature is not just a technique or a collection of tropes and media but a sensibility that is shared by these artists. These artists share not just conceptual interests but also formal ideals, which converge to form a sensibility or attitude reflecting the significant role of the visual language, framework and conventions of miniature in each artist's training or early development.

This attitude, for example, has at its core a rigour of application, reflecting the laborious work of the miniaturist. There is a continued reference to the art of the book, referencing the manuscripts that miniature paintings were traditionally composed within. Also, geometric designs, characteristic of Islamic art and architecture and particularly the grid that underpinned this (and that also resonates with modernist ideas) also figure large in these works. Drawing parallel lines in a tight grid are the first lessons of miniature painting and almost all of the artists would have spent some time doing that. The exhibition embodies the intensity of experience and a framework for art making that is common to practices as diverse as Rana's composite photographs where each single photograph is like a single pardokht application of paint in miniature painting, or Mangi's meticulous, obsessive grids and patterns created out of human hair. Though these artists take the historical miniature in multiple directions, and nearly half of them did not train as 'miniaturists', their work shares a singular attitude, a set of common principles.

How do you perceive the miniature moving forward in the light of this show?

I do not think the show is going to propel the miniature forward, it is actually a reflection of what the miniature has now become. In assessing its propositions, I am struck by three things. Firstly, that the historical arc of the miniature goes back beyond just the recent past. Shemza studied miniature painting in 1940s, Naqsh in the 1960s and there were dozens, if not hundreds, of other artists whose practice was influenced by it before the 1980s.

The foundation for contemporary miniatures through the pioneering work of Akhlaq and the elevation of the miniature department at the NCA to a 'major' was under the guidance of Bashir Ahmed. Secondly, the commonality and strength of this sensibility or attitude in the work of artists who did not train in miniature per se, for example, Rana, Butt, Abbas or Kazim, is striking.

And finally, the work of the youngest generation of artists to come through the miniature department has begun to radically question the formal bases of what miniature practice is. Zeeshan's 'Dying miniature' series of pencil on sandpaper works is an attempt to define the boundaries of what could be called miniature.

However, I would refer in particular to the two youngest artists in the show—Chagani and Mangi—who practice what one could call 'Miniature 2.0'. Chagani, for instance, produced installations from tiny, fired clay bricks for his graduation thesis in miniature painting. And in that gesture showed everyone who follows that the limitations of the miniature (like in any other form of art) are only those of the artist's imagination.

Is there a possibility of this exhibition coming to Pakistan—if so, then when, if not then why not?

Absolutely. Precisely when, I cannot commit now, as it depends on venues, funding and logistical issues. But we have been encouraged by the growing interest in having a public engagement with art in Pakistan, and would be keen to bring a version of the show back home to where it came from.

A number of artists in this show are settled abroad—their art practice is influenced by global trends and they exhibit more frequently in foreign venues than at home in Pakistan with the result that local audiences are not completely in touch with the developments in their oeuvre which leads to a 'disconnect' situation. What are your comments on this?

Given the lack of functioning public institutions and the nascent critical engagement with art I would argue that there are no artists that local audiences are 'completely in touch' with. Lack of public funding and museum culture also means that opportunities to realise large-scale or ambitious works also tend to happen outside Pakistan. I can think of Abbas's work at last year's Sharjah Biennial, or Rana's work for the Pakistan Pavilion in Dubai the year-before, or Imran Qureshi's commission for the first Singapore Biennial, as cases in point. Better knowledge of an artist's oeuvre will have to come from more and better publications, and new, economical, internet-based platforms starting with the artists' own websites.

Having said all this, running through the list of the 13 artists in 'Beyond the page', the only ones who have not shown in Pakistan in the last two to three years are those that are no longer with us—Shemza and Akhlaq! For both of whom a properly researched and funded retrospective is long overdue.