‘Scripted across the Indian Ocean’

Above is the title of an interesting joint show on view at Green Cardamom, London. It includes the work of two artists born a generation and an ocean apart: Lala Rukh (born 1948, Lahore) and Muhanned Cader (born 1966, Colombo).

The two first met in 2002, when Lala Rukh invited the latter to the National College of Arts (NCA), Lahore for an artist-in-residence program. Prior to this meeting, they had each independently created a body of work that bore remarkable similarities to each other: Lala Rukh's ‘River in an Ocean’ series (1992-93) and Muhanned Cader’s ‘Nightscapes’ (1999).

In this exhibition, guest curator Mariah Lookman has invited both artists to revisit these bodies of work, as a way of carrying on their earlier (albeit unwitting) conversation. An explanatory note states: “Cader’s work consists of collages and works on paper, both in his characteristic fashion, removing the rectangle that frames most depictions of the ‘landscape’. His shapes reference materials found on the beach. But each ‘painting’ on wood also plays with scale, color, light, sheen and tactility to explore painting as a medium itself.

Lala Rukh’s works appear, at first glance, to be relentlessly opaque and almost impenetrable. Though well known as a feminist activist and a hugely influential art teacher, her own art practice remains relatively less known. Her graphite marks on black carbon paper are subtle, poetic interventions skirting at the fringes of visual perception. Almost daring the viewer to keep looking…

The works on view in the exhibition take a sideways glance at the political backdrop of their making, updating the perspective of the turmoil and violence in both societies during the 1980s and 1990s to present-day realities. In curating this exhibition, Lookman not only revisits a past body of work to find new meanings but creates a space for contemplation, review and reassembly.