SRK, Hrithik Roshan part of Rashid Rana’s 10-year journey

Mohatta Palace Museum launches publication celebrating artist’s work.

KARACHI: The Mohatta Palace Museum’s exhibit of artist Rashid Rana’s retrospective was marked by the launch of ‘Labyrinth of Reflections: The art of Rashid Rana, 1992-2012’, a tome that is, quipped Sherry Rehman, “astonishing, spectacular and as heavy as Hameed Haroon once used to be.”

Rehman presided over the launch of the catalogue - the eighth publication by the Mohatta Palace Museum - on Tuesday. She praised the book’s editors, Hameed Haroon and Naazish Ata-Ullah, for their painstaking presentation of Rana’s work. The catalogue, priced at Rs15,000, features six essays exploring the thematic concerns of Rana’s art while also contextually situating him within the modern Pakistani art scene. Ata-Ullah’s introductory essay, for instance, takes its starting point in the work of artist Zahoorul Akhlaq. Hameed Haroon, Quddus Mirza, Girish Shahane, Adnan Madani, Virginia Whiles, Salima Hashmi and Razia Sadik have also contributed essays to the catalogue.



Not many people appreciate that there are only a handful of artists working hard to present a very different face of this country on an international level, noted Rana, adding that he hoped this show would raise awareness about contemporary art in Pakistan. The presentation of all his works in one space surprised him, he confessed, as the art works’ thematic concerns of dualities and paradoxes were ever more apparent once viewed together. This he felt, was the challenge that contemporary artists in Pakistan face - how to visually express the polarities of life and the many worlds that exist in a country where a “tonga runs side by side with a Mercedes.”

The challenge for artists, he said, is to create work that resonates with its Pakistani audience while also speaking to an international viewer and not just to “an audience of twenty” or what Rehman called “drawing room art”.

In her opening speech, the museum’s curator Nasreen Askari thanked the exhibit’s curators, Ata-Ullah and Haroon, and members of Rana’s studio who facilitated the transformation of the museum during the installation of the works. Askari also paid tribute to Hameed Akhund for his efforts to rein in the exhibit’s organisers and his coordination with Rana’s studio and Mohsin Nathani of Standard Chartered Bank for the bank’s financial support to the project of cataloguing Rana’s works. The launch was attended by members of Pakistan’s art and literary world as well as thirty very eager students from Lahore’s Beaconhouse National University, where Rana serves as faculty member of the School of Visual Arts and Design.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 28^th, 2013.