Category: In Focus
The Voice of the Artist
If someday you have a few months to spare, come to Barbary...you will feel the precious and exceptional influence of the sun, which gives everything a [...]
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (of Letters)
There are many things that can prompt an artist to put aside the usual apparatus for some time and write: uncooperative weather, the horrors of a poor [...]
Women and Recent Art: Some Thoughts
The contribution of women artists or the nature of women's art, in a broad discussion, could comprise many stories of celebration, resilience, resista [...]
Guerrilla Girls: Feminist Art, Then and Now
It seems like a hundred years ago that the question “Why have there been no great women artists?” was posed by Linda Nochlin in her essay of the same [...]
Art Market Trends: Art Affairs
It’s simple: artworks needs to engender in the receptive viewer an aesthetic experience. The art market revolves based on this simple notion – a milli [...]
Art Crossing Borders
“But what has this to do with me?” gasped a middle-aged financial advisor, struggling hard to absorb the immaculate awe-inspiring Pollock in front of [...]
The Functions of Form
A character in one of the books by Mushtaq Ahmed Yusufi observes that in Pakistan, with the population of 180 million, the number of locks must be twi [...]
Territorial Re-Arrangements: Attabad Lake, a Potential Border
This essay is an attempt to reflect upon the territorial challenges that are faced by post-conflict and emergency zones of Pakistan. It speculates on [...]
City as Art – Art in a City – City in Protest – Art of Resistance
When I was asked to write about 'the city as art', I thought of the topic as an opportunity to imagine the spatiality of the city, particularly Lahore [...]
Two Paradoxes of Origin and Originality: Mohammad Ali Talpur, Negation and Resistance
The question of origins seems to have receded into the background over the last decade or so of Pakistani art. The success of globalisation, the exten [...]