Art exhibition: Lahore, Lahore hai

8 pieces by 4 artists on display at the Rohtas II Art Gallery.

LAHORE:

An exhibition aimed at generating a dialogue between art and narrative, opened at the Rohtas II Art Gallery on Friday.

The show, a part of the Lahore Literature Festival, features eight pieces by four artists. Asad Hayee, the curator at the Rohtas Gallery, said “There is a subtle connection among all artists whose works are on display… they all have either lived in Lahore or have visited it.”

Hayee said the event had been arranged to establish a connection between the visiting writers and artists who have been associated with Lahore.

London-based Faiza Butt has two pieces Tales of Whopped Fantasies 3 and 4 in archival ink and acrylic on polyester film. Butt’s work, is about the Pakistani community in the UK, adapting to technology-driven pop culture.

Butt migrated to the UK nearly a decade ago and has been visiting Pakistan every year. It’s her fourth show at the Gallery, she says.

In one of the pieces two Pathan men can be seen taking pictures with a digital phone. In another, a bearded fair-skinned man is seen talking over the phone against a London skyscraper.

David Alesworth’s Cantt Runner shows the map of an 1893 Cantt, embroidered on an antique rug.

“It reflects the colonial spatial imagination of the British,” Alesworth said, who has been living in Pakistan for 24 years.

He said he enjoyed interventions on textile and has previously made several European garden pieces.



Salman Toor, who divides his time between New York and Lahore, has three oil canvases.

Toor, a graduate of the Pratt Art School in Brooklyn, said his aim was to “revive the old master’s paintings of the 13 to 16th century.”

“I have tried to achieve the same style of painting. Most of my works speak of the master-servant relationship in Pakistan,” he said.

Toor said his work was a statement on domestic life of upper class Pakistanis. “The rickshaw driver’s dream reflects that a lifestyle with servants is every man’s dream in Pakistan,” he said.

Two pieces by the veteran artist Anwar Saeed are also on display.

The work displayed is not for sale. The exhibition will continue until March 2.

A delegation from the LLF – 15 to 20 writers – visited the gallery, earlier in the day.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 23^rd, 2013.