Rashid Rana presents a kaleidoscope of art practices in Pakistan

‘Resemble Reassemble’ is culled out of the Anupam and Lekha Poddar collection. It showcases a kaledioscope of art practices in Pakistan. The art produced in the last 10 years in the country is more grounded in the local context. There are new new trends emerging along with a new approach and thinking sans any unwanted baggage of history.

For example, Jinnah’s popular and official images attain an Andy Warholesque framing. A veiled woman hijacks a central icon of ‘Madonna and child’. A video-installation about an Indian and Pakistani news anchor seemingly contradicts the same event. Saira Wasim in ‘Nuclear Threat’ comments on the tit-for-tat testing of nuclear devices by the warring neighbors; showing the two in diapers, not followed by typical war & peace visuals, but Ahsan Jamal’s ‘Kaho na pyar hai’.

The show reflects this changed mindset and keenness to expriement. One of Pakistan's most renowned contemporary artists, Rashid Rana himself negotiates a wide range media such as painting, photography and video installation. The 75 works selected for ‘Resemble Reassemble’ at Gurgaon based Devi Art Foundation crystallize the new art trends in Pakistan spanning the last decade or so. Summing up the show, artist-curator Rashid Rana has been quoted as saying:

“If we try to find commonalities in ‘art from Pakistan', there exist none. It's not an artist's specific show which is usually the case. I have reassembled the collection which has brought forth the resemblances.”

Often the shows from a particular region are seen through a ‘narrow view finder', as he terms it, leading only to a limited reading of the works featured. When he started working on the show, he realized, it would be more of a ‘national survey’, so, he chose to strategize it with an intent of shifting the viewer’s focus from the apparent theme. He quips: “It dissembles and reassembles, just like a Transformer.”