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Half-truths
Half-truths
Naveen Naqvi and Ali Sultan
Faraar Gallery
July 19 - August 9, 2017
Opening reception: Wednesday, July 19, 5-8 pm
"The modern way of seeing is to see in fragments. It is felt that reality is essentially unlimited, and knowledge is open-ended. It follows that all boundaries, all unifying ideas have to be misleading, demagogic; at best, provisional; almost always, in the long run, untrue. To see reality in the light of certain unifying ideas has the undeniable advantage of giving shape and form to our experience. But it also - so the modern way of seeing instructs us - denies the infinite variety and complexity of the real. Thereby it represses our energy, indeed our right, to remake what we wish to remake - our society, ourselves. What is liberating, we are told, is to notice more and more. ...... There is no final photograph.”
From Susan Sontag's essay, Photography: A Little Summa in “At The Same Time: Essays and Speeches”
(London: Hamish Hamilton, 2007)
Naveen Naqvi is a fine art photographer. Her photographic work has been published in print and online, and exhibited in Vancouver, Canada. Prior to this she was a broadcast, print and online journalist, television actor, poet, music show host, and model.
Artist’s Statement:
"While I do not identify as a landscape photographer, this work was made over the course of 2015 and 2017. It was a time of personal difficulty in which the forests of Vancouver were a great solace. With the exception of two pictures, all images are made on 35mm and 120mm film.
I am interested in issues of belonging, desire, loss and impermanence. (I often think of how ‘belonging’ holds within it ‘longing’.) As we, the world, and we in the world are in a constant state of hurtling “forward," my photographs and writing come from a need to understand what it means to be in this time.”
Ali Sultan is a self-taught painter and photographer who lives and works in Lahore. He gets lost in windows, hides in stairways, hangs in curtains and sleeps in a hat.
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Outsider Art
Rijah Chhapra, Hamza Iftikar, and Asad Kamran
Outsider Art
Faraar Gallery
May 10 - May 24, 2017
Opening reception: Wed, May 10 6 - 8 pm
Faraar Gallery is pleased to present Outsider Art, an exhibition of new works by Rijah Chhapra, Hamza Iftikar, and Asad Kamran. The show brings together three emerging artists’ diverse interests, influences and art practices.
The works in this show are varied in their expression. From Asad’s intuitive, gestural, and whimsical handling of paint on canvas; to Rijah’s intricate worlds within human organs; to Hamza’s inward reflection through self-portraiture, these three artists share an urgency to create something. They draw upon abstraction, illustration, fantasy, representation, design, and other visual forms to make sense of the world around them. In order to counteract the business of their daily, perhaps more “practical”, career pursuits, they turn to art as a constant source of strength and grounding. Their creative practices provide solace from hectic life commitments, and room for play in the face of rigidly prescribed work structures. Each of them feels compelled to create art as a means to explore themselves and their lives on a deeper level.
Rijah Chhapra is currently enrolled at the Aga Khan University.While she is immersed in puzzling pathology and fazed by the human body, art enables her to escape andinvent her own surreal reality. In the worlds she creates, laws of science do not have to apply. She is free to put pen to paper and imagine her own intricate systems. She warps and transforms anatomical forms to her will, merging fantasy with reality.
Hamza Iftikar is currently enrolled at the Aga Khan University. Hamza is a visual artist and spoken word poet, and juggles art and science on a daily basis.He draws from the frustration and magic of letting his different interests and pursuits collide. He believes that a daily creative practice helps to express suppressed feelings and beliefs, which are useful in the attempt to navigate the adult world. Ideas of self-representation, gender and sexuality emerge through his work. This is Hamza’s second show at Faraar Gallery. His recent shows include Rang Saazi, the visualart installation at LMM 2017, and Alter Ego at Faraar Gallery in November 2016. Two of his pieces ‘Gnarl’ and ‘Getting Closer’ are part of Forever South’s ‘The HotCues Series’.
Asad Kamran is currently enrolled at the University of Edinburgh, where he studies Architecture. Art making for him is a cathartic experience to deal with the challenges and changes of life. He has tried, a few times, to determine the fate of his canvases before he puts paint on them. But this has hardly ever worked out. Instead, he now allows the paintings to develop organically. His process is whimsical and intuitive, allowing him to express himself without constraints.The resulting paintings area collective expression of all that he feels in the moment when he is faced with the canvas. When architecture feels too structured and practical, painting allows him to stumble and slip.He drips and leaks color onto canvas in order to shake up the logicalrigiditywhich academia and life sometimes envelop him in.
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Monument Valley, Seasons 2 & 3, In Memoriam of Sabeen Mahmud
JFrancois Chenin
Monument Valley, Seasons 2 & 3,
In Memoriam of Sabeen Mahmud
Faraar Gallery
March 25 - April 1, 2017
Opening reception: Sun, March 25, 6.30 - 8.00 pm
Faraar Gallery is pleased to present Monument Valley, Seasons 2 & 3, in Memoriam of Sabeen Mahmud, an exhibition of new digital collages by JFrancois Chenin. This is his second solo show with Faraar Gallery, which he has dedicated to the memory of Sabeen Mahmud.
“Monument Valley is a childhood remembrance, a journey, a particular relationship with pop art and collages, a literally literary attempt.
I never liked painting; at best some drawings with China ink a long time ago, an attraction for architect’s designs, the use of rOtring pen and ruler, the highlighting and white spaces, very little of blue in that period, above all red, grey, black, a good pair of scissors and glue, some collages with the help of cartoons, newspapers and the utilization of trichloroethylene in quest of superposition and transparence, above all faces on handwritten pages. As good as to confess that nothing destined me to picture-drawing.
This childhood was a patchwork, a sequence of instant sensations, reconstituted afterwards.
I am only preoccupied with the balance and the composition.
I move forward without theory only on the basis of infatuations and because I have an urge to see the paintings hanging on wall, in the books, on the canvas, I never tire of taking in images (no doubt they are only images!). Is it the painting or rather the composition and the emotional dizziness, which it conceals that I feel which I swallow?
In the Monument Valley I compose.
Each component of the composition links me to a vision and to the particular instant of this vision. I compose the paintings like I write the sequels of my books: by diverting them, by turning them upside down and recomposing them until finding the correspondence between the thought and the “painting”.
In which it is question of journey.
This journey is precisely Monument Valley in which I bring the pictorial space nearer to the pop art of big American spaces, in which the graphical intentions of the American paintings of 50’s and 70’s incorporate this natural space, which hesitates between the earth and the sky. From it also flows this attachment to the perspectives, whether open or intimate, always majestic, that a textual or pictorial composition allows me to draw.
I do not differentiate between a sequel and a painting
Reality and fiction get entwined, reality of the sentiments and fictional space which allows their exploration. The scores follow each other and reconstitute the emotions. “As far as the fascination is concerned, the ear has the music. The eye has the painting. The death has the past. Love has the naked body of the other. The literature has the individual language reduced to silence” wrote Pascal Quignard. The basic thing is to recommence. The compositions of Monument Valley bear the imprints of this ranting silence. One will never finish with writing.
This ambition of recommencing, putting together the pieces, reconstituting the past and the future, joining what remained separated; every thing is present in it. I follow this path whenever I write or compose so as not to resume a seemingly interrupted conversation on meeting again.“
JFrancois Chenin
Karachi, 16 February 2017
JFrançois Chénin is the Director of Alliance Française de Karachi. Born in 1954, in Lorraine, he spent his childhood abroad (Iran, Turkey, Greece ...), thanks to a father fond of traveling. He underwent his secondary education in Avignon and then studied philosophy at Grenoble and Economy of Education at Dijon. He currently lives in Karachi, Pakistan.
He spent time in two ministerial cabinets. He touched politics but he perceives his world rather through his heart. He abandoned politics. He made an escapade in the United States, stayed in Albuquerque (where it all began), then in Canada, Quebec (where everything began once again). He also served as mayor of a village of 500 inhabitants, Veyssilieu, a commune in the Isère department in southeastern France. He participated in the creation of the national network of equal opportunities for girls and boys in the French school system.He created the Research and Development department at the ONISEP and later led a company of pastry products.
He has lived abroad for 20 years at the service of French language and culture as Director of French Cultural Centre or Deputy Cultural Counsellor or General Delegate of Alliance Française (Israel, India, United States and Pakistan today). Since childhood, he has a taste for elsewhere.
He has three children and he loves to linger on the terrace of cafes.He likes gray, black and white, blue sky and silent deserts. He is also a writer.
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You And I
Anum Lasharie and Noormah Jamal
You And I
Faraar Gallery
March 1 - March 15, 2017
Opening reception: Wed, March 1 5-8 pm
Faraar Gallery is pleased to present You And I, an exhibition of paintings by Anum Lasharie and Noormah Jamal. The show explores the painting tradition of portraiture toaddressideas of representation, identity, and belonging. In a time when we are constantly surrounded by pictures of people, Lasharie and Jamal offer us a slow and considered exploration of the internal and external landscape of a person.
Anum Lasharie’s paintingsaddress the anxiety of a social being byinvestigating the relationship between physical and mental comfort.She is keenly aware of how the environment around us can affect our peace of mind. External forces which are not in our control can change our behavior and self-image. In Lasharie’s paintings, these forces act on the figure to create moments of varying discomfort or unease.There are often clear demarcations between the figure and her world, suggesting a rift. The figure is revealed or hidden, perhaps embroiled in an internal struggle of visibility.
Noormah Jamal's figures want to be seen, though they might not be sure of how exactly.Even if they sometimes occupy the space of the canvas a little awkwardly, they still confront the viewer’s gaze quite directly. Caught between their quiet defiance and a simultaneous self-consciousness, her portraits are whimsical yet haunting. We can choose to flip through them casually, or allow ourselves to read into them to imagine the secret lives of the people depicted. We can choose to liken them to a series of photographs taken from different angles, a little like someone trying to take the perfect selfie.
Anum Lasharie lives and works in Lahore. She received her BFA with Honors from National College of Arts in 2013. She had her solo exhibition in Rohtas 2 Gallery in 2016. Other shows include Alhamra Art Gallery, Taseer Art Gallery, Zahoor-ul-Akhlaq Gallery and The Paint Bucket Gallery. She has been working as a curator for The Paint Bucket Gallery for almost three years and has curated several exhibitions with the gallery.
Noormah Jamal is from FATA and currently lives in Lahore, where she teaches art at Lahore Grammar School. She received her BFA with Honors in Miniature painting from National College of Arts in 2016. She has recently exhibited at The Paintbucket Gallery, Ejaz Gallery, and also in Dubai. Her work has been covered by Artnow, Herald, Dawn, Sunday Magazine, and others.
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Cranes and Cube: A talk and exhibition by Asma Kazmi
Asma Kazmi
Cranes and Cube: A talk and exhibition by Asma Kazmi
Faraar Gallery
Saturday, 7th January 2017 | 7:00PM – 9:00PM
Join us on Saturday, 7th January 2017 for an artist talk and exhibition featuring Asma Kazmi.
The talk will be moderated by Zahra Malkani.
Cranes and Cube:
This series of drawings are one aspect of a broader exploration of looking at the architecture, architectural heritage and spatial practices of parts of the Islamic world. Cranes and Cube is a reduction of the topographic features of a site to bring up ambivalent subjectivities in the narration of the site. These drawings are both propositional and critical, set against the political force fields of idealism and grandeur of the real estate boom in the Middle East, in conflict with the cycles of defeat visible in refugeehood, exile and displacement.
Bio:
Asma Kazmi creates transdisciplinary, relational works where people, media, and objects come together. She is the recipient of many awards including the Fulbright Research Award, (CIES) to India; the Faculty Research Grant, CalArts; the Great Rivers Biennial, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; Rocket Grant, the Spencer Museum of Art, Kansas University; At the Edge, the University of Illinois in Chicago; She has exhibited at venues such as the Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, VA; Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City; Queens Museum of Art, NY; Worth Ryder Gallery, UC Berkeley; Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis; H&R Block Space, Kansas City; Grand Arts, Kansas City; University of Missouri, St. Louis; The Guild Gallery, New York; Galerie Sans Titre, Brussels, Belgium; and Gallery 400, University of Illinois in Chicago. Kazmi has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Kansas City Art Institute, and CalArts, where she was permanent faculty and co-program director of the Art Program. Currently, she is an assistant professor at UC Berkeley. She was born & raised in Karachi, Pakistan.
Schedule:
7:00PM | Introduction
7:00PM - 7:30PM | Artist Talk featuring Asma Kazmi
7:30PM - 7:45PM | Q/A Session
7:45PM onwards | Exhbition Opening
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100 posters to end extremism
100 posters to end extremism
Faraar Gallery
December 16 – December 22, 2016
Opening Reception: Friday, December 16, 5:00 pm
Poster for Tomorrow Pakistan & PeaceNiche/T2F in collaboration with Human Rights Commission of Pakistan present an exhibition of 100 best posters, selected from 5300 entries on Extremism.
Worldwide exhibition will open on December 8th, 2016 at the Halle Pajol in Paris. Confirmed exhibitions around the world are Aix En Province, Ankara, Cairo, Chelyabinsk, Doha, Florence, Gainesville, Guayaquil, Istanbul, Karachi, Kermanshah, Le Renouard, Morocco, Mumbai, Quito, Sarajevo, Tabriz, Thessaloniki and more to come…
Karachi Exhibition will open at T2F from December 16, 2016 followed by a talk on 'Extremism and Pakistan' by renowned Human Rights and Peace Activist, I.A. Rahman on Thursday December 22, 2016 at 6PM.
Conceptual Narrative: Make Extremism History
Using design to promote and serve major human rights causes and the transmission of know-how are the most important principled directions of our activities. Since 2009, Poster for Tomorrow has focused each year on a basic human right, from freedom of expression to the universal right to healthcare. We’re proud of what we’ve achieved and the community we’ve established in this time.
Violence and extreme opinions only inspire negativity: intelligent debate and collective action will lead us to a better future. We need to meet in the middle to change the world together, that’s why its time to “Make Extremism History!” We have to take action to determine our own futures. Change must come from the bottom-up: from us. This can only happen in a world that is at peace with itself, where people are equals, not divided by labels, nationalities or religion.
We need to work together to change the world and to make extremism history.
About 'Poster for Tomorrow':
We are men and women around the world who believe that a poster, a simple, arresting image combined by a powerful piece of text, can be a force for change. A poster that when posted on a wall or on the net can make somebody sit up and take notice of an injustice and inspire them to take action. And that's what we hope to do - to try and stop injustice.
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Alter Ego
Faizan Riedinger, Ameer Hoti and Hamza Iftikar
Alter Ego
Faraar Gallery
November 11 – November 18, 2016
Opening Reception: 11th November 2016 | 6:30 - 10:00PM
Preamble:
In ordinary life, creativity means making something for the soul and out of every experience. How does this obscure imagery translate into modern practice? Is it the need to be objectified in an image until we find that piece of ourselves, that lovable twin, which lives in the world and as the world? How does an image express that nature like personal existence, could be reconstructed in repetitive and fragmented patterns? Is it the artist’s illusory imagination that experiences quite a different world from that of the integrated and rational self? How does visual communication of our identities through dress, fashion and eroticism become ubiquitous to who we are and the people around us?
These various nuances of the second self are explored in ‘Alter ego’ – a group show which brings the work of three emerging and contemporary artists with diverse practices in art and design.
About the Artists:
Faizan Riedinger is a visual artist and musician who divides his time between Karachi and Berlin. He was raised in a family of artists and art enthusiasts, his direct influence being his mother, who is an art educationist for over ten years, alongside pursuing her own practice. His German Father is a Sufi Master who honed him in on creative self-expression in his early years and while growing up, this exposure was an essential outlet for Faizan to harness his own innate talent.
His current work is deeply influenced by the repetition of endless varieties of natural patterns, fractals, symmetry and geometrical shapes. A painstaking and dedicated hand-done process, this form of art allows him to express the visual echoes and dynamic compositions of movement, scaling, mirroring and rotating elements. Some of his inspirations include the work of Mario Martinez Mars-1, moonassi, Jeremy Fish (Jeremy Fish Artwork) and local artist, Reem Khurshid.
Music has also played an equally important role in shaping Faizan’s art practice. His first EP release, “We’re Always Home” came in 2008 with an indie electronic Karachi-based rock band called Mole, under the record label www.mooshymoo.com, followed by his second EP ‘Visiting 1’, which was released in 2011 with the same band. He also released an EP as a duo on the same label called Mightyhook. Later, he was part of the indie rock band, Sikandar ka Mandar and //orangenoise – a shoegaze band founded in 2010 in Karachi. While in Berlin, he started an experimental collaboration, VEKA with Italian musician, Andrea Burelli which led to the release of an EP under the label Hear Now Records. A solo electronic musician, he has also released a couple of singles with Forever South and has had the opportunity to DJ in Berlin and Hamburg last year.
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Artist Talk Featuring Miro Craemer
Miro Craemer
Artist Talk Featuring Miro Craemer
Faraar Gallery
Opening Reception: Saturday 5th November 2016 | 7:00PM – 8:30PM
In Miro Craemer's work, fashion, art, and social responsibility meet. The German Fashion Artist and Social Designer was chosen by an international jury for a two months residency at Vasl in Karachi as part of “Urbanities – art and public space in Pakistan”, a project the Goethe-Institutee is conducting throughout the year 2016, in collaboration with the Lahore Biennale Foundation, Vasl and other partners.
In his artistic research project in Karachi, Miro Craemer takes a special interest in the Baldia factory fire in 2012, attempting to translate personal tragedies, traditional handcrafts, social awareness and global market mechanisms into an artwork.
Halfway through his stay in Pakistan, Miro Craemer will talk about his work in progress, difficulties and surprises he has encountered, the multi-layered forms of desire and the upcoming exhibition.
Researcher and artist Hira Khan, will also join the talk to share her perspective as project assistant from the Vasl team.
The talk will be moderated by Sara-Duana Meyer, who is the project consultant of “Urbanities – art and public space in Pakistan” at the Goethe-Institute Pakistan.
About Miro Craemer:
Miro Craemer is a Fashion and Social Designer. He has been collaborating with visual artists, musicians and choreographers for various art projects and exhibitions. His latest project "TOGETTHERE_fACTory" took place for the Pinakothek of the Modern in Munich. His fashion and culture label "Miro Craemer" is presented in his showroom in Munich's renowned Maximilian Street.
Website: www.mirocraemer.com
About “Urbanities – art and public space in Pakistan":
The collaboration between the Goethe-Institute Pakistan, the Lahore Biennale Foundation, Vasl and other partners, incites discursive and artistic contributions and interventions related to Pakistan's controversial and contested urban space, recollecting Henri Lefebvr´s “right to the city” for critical discussion and contributes to a trajectory leading to the Lahore Biennale in 2017 in a series of events. By way of artistic interventions and critical research possibilities, spheres and impediments of public space and its citizens' engagement with Lahore and Karachi are explored and negotiated.
Link: https://www.goethe.de/ins/pk/en/kul/sup/urb.html
Vasl Artists' Collective Lahore Biennale Foundation Goethe-Institute Karachi (Pakistan)
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Prelude – A solo show by Jav Arshad
Javeria Arshad
Prelude – A solo show by Jav Arshad
Faraar Gallery
March 17th – March 25th, 2016
Opening Reception: Thursday, 17th March 2016 | 7PM
'Driven by a passion for monochromatic minimalism, and with no formal training, I stumbled my way into artistic expression a short three years ago. I set about to explore the monochromatic infinities hidden in everyday forms, especially circles. My goal is to celebrate the subtle pervasiveness of these elements, and the depth they add to our world.
'Prelude' is my collection of hand drawn pieces that invite you to explore the space of emotion as emotion comes into being; a space where black and white spiral against each other, and in doing so, each creates the other’s reality.'
About:
Javeria Arshad is a visual artist based in Karachi. She graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in Social Sciences from York University in 2012 after which she embarked on the traditional route in marketing, with a drive to create a career in the corporate world.
Her journey into the exploration of art was a happy accident but in retrospect, has started to feel more like reality in only just three years. Javeria has been offered multiple opportunities to showcase her work nationally and internationally. Pluie/Noir, Portugal has honed in on her artisitic journey and she regularly collaborates with them.
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Salman Soofi: Seeing through closed eyes
Salman Soofi
Salman Soofi: Seeing through closed eyes
Faraar Gallery
March 4th – March 6th, 2016
Opening Reception: Friday, 4th March 2016 |7PM
"I unintentionally peek into my subconscious to transfer divine messages on the canvas."
Salman Soofi considers himself a divine artist because most of his paintings were not planned the way they appear now. There are several versions buried under the final artworks because most of the canvases have been used several times.
Various ideas and concepts are simultaneously running in his mind when he starts a new piece. He begins working on a concept and ends up doing a totally different one.
The process takes him into a trance and he is usually in a state of passion where thoughts and ideas melt within his soul and are transformed into figures and shapes. This state of transformation is so out of control that most of the times he leaves the brush and starts painting with his hands.
His paintings address social issues such as starvation, alcoholism and anguish of wars. His works are constant reminders to everyone to wake up and fight against the system of oppression, the media deceptions and lies which we face everyday. On the other hand, he also tries to bring harmony depicting nature, glimpses of natural elements in minimalistic style.
Salman Soofi was a guest speaker at the Institute of Modern Art in Moscow, Russia where he delivered lectures on expressionism and explained his techniques in detail.
Currently, he is based in the city of Allama Iqbal and Faiz Ahmad Faiz - Sialkot.
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"Mapping Politics In/Of the city: In conversation with Nausheen Anwar & Sarwat Viqar"
Nausheen Anwar and Sarwat Viqar
"Mapping Politics In/Of the city: In conversation with Nausheen Anwar & Sarwat Viqar"
Faraar Gallery
Opening Reception: Saturday, 9th January 2016 | 6PM
Nausheen Anwar and Sarwat Viqar will discuss the politics of mapping and representing the city. They will share their research for a recent art publication, Exhausted Geographies, and will discuss the role of mapping in their research and academic practices in the disciplines of urban studies and anthropology.
Exhausted Geographies is a radical engagement with the politics of representation and map-making in order to explore and produce new ways of seeing and imagining cities in the global south. This publication is a collection of 7 maps, each coupled with an essay, contributed by artists, architects, historians, urban planners, geographers and anthropologists working on/in Karachi. It is a coming together of different situated and localized knowledges to enable an exchange of ideas and methodologies beyond the borders of the academy and the art world. Using artistic and interdisciplinary research methods, the contributors subvert mapmaking into an open and critical medium to produce visual representations of space, temporality, politics and human relationships.
About:
Nausheen H. Anwar is an Assistant Professor of Urban Studies in the Department of Social Sciences at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi, Pakistan. She received her PhD from the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP), Columbia University. She is the author of Infrastructure Redux: Crisis, Progress in Industrial Pakistan & Beyond (2015, Palgrave Macmillan), which explores, through detailed cases of Sialkot and Faisalabad in industrializing Punjab, the double-edged narratives of development that frame infrastructure in post-independence Pakistan.
Nausheen is the recipient of several grants that center on themes such as gender and inequality, conflict resolution and urban governance, migration, and political-economy of infrastructure development. Her current project examines shifting registers of mobility, infrastructures and political authority that mediate everyday life in a constellation of cities and towns that connect the border regions of Iran and Pakistan. Aspects of Nausheen’s work also appear in the journals Antipode, Environment and Planning A, and South Asian History and Culture. She has held post-doctoral fellowships at Harvard University and at the Asia Research Institute (ARI), National University Singapore.
Sarwat Viqar is an architect and urban anthropologist whose work explores the socio-spatial dialectics that shape life and politics in postcolonial cities. Her doctoral thesis is an examination of sovereign power and public space in Karachi's inner city quarters. She is a PhD candidate in the departments of history and anthropology at Concordia University in Montreal. She also teaches in the Humanities Faculty in John Abbott College, Montreal, Canada. She has a bachelors in architecture from Dawood College of Engineering and Technology and then obtained a Masters in architecture from McGill University.
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This used to be my playground: An exhibition by Jaffar Hasan
Jaffar Hasan
This used to be my playground: An exhibition by Jaffar Hasan
Faraar Gallery
Opening Reception:Thursday, 17th December 2015 | 7PM
A nostalgic reminder of a childhood spent in the 80s in Karachi is Funland. Bustling with tourists and residents of the city, it offered entertainment to the myriad crowds who visited it every day. The thrill of the stomach churning rides bouncing off with dazzling neon streaks of light was worth surrendering to, even for a few precious moments.
The series, ‘This used to be my playground’ is a collective memory of Karachi that Jaffer revisits and represents through his photographic narrative.
In recent years, the upsurge in construction projects, has reduced Funland to a forgotten and dystopian amusement park, although it remains fully functional to date. Jaffar’s photographs emanate the isolation as well as the strange mixture of the beautiful, and the uncanny that surrounds its vanishing presence.
About:
Jaffar Hasan is best known for his work in the fashion world. His photographs have been featured in publications such as Dawn, The News, Visage, Libas, Daily Times, OK! and Hello Magazine.
Jaffar did his early schooling in Karachi and Paris and divided his time between Montreal and Seattle to complete his degree course in Digital Cinema and Film.
Currently, he is based in Karachi and has been documenting parts of the city that are reminiscent of its glorious past with the keen eyes of an urban explorer.
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Prof. S. Haroon Ahmed and Poster for Tomorrow Poster for Tomorrow: An Exhibition of 100 best posters on Right to Healthcare
Prof. S. Haroon Ahmed and Poster for Tomorrow Poster for Tomorrow: An Exhibition of 100 best posters on Right to Healthcare
Faraar Gallery
December 10th – December 13th, 2015
Opening Reception: Thursday December 10, 2015 | 5pm
Poster for Tomorrow Pakistan & PeaceNiche/T2F in collaboration with Human Rights Commission of Pakistan will be organizing an exhibition of 100 best posters, selected from 4980 entries on the theme of Right to Healthcare.
Every year Poster for Tomorrow chooses a basic human right to address. In 2015, it is the universal right to healthcare. Graphic designers from around the world were invited to make posters on this theme – this year the contest received 4980 posters from more than a hundred countries, once again setting a new record.
People don’t have access to the treatment that could save their life even in the world’s wealthiest countries, for financial or logistical reasons. Poster for tomorrow wants to draw attention on this right as it is enshrined in Article 25 of the Declaration of Human Rights. Artists focused on three specific ideas: universal access to healthcare, eradication of immunizable diseases, and access to drinking water.
Renowned Human Rights and Peace activist Prof. S. Haroon Ahmed will inaugurate the show and give a talk on the issue at the occasion.
About 'Poster for Tomorrow':
We are men and women around the world who believe that a poster, a simple, arresting image combined by a powerful piece of text, can be a force for change. A poster that when posted on a wall or on the net can make somebody sit up and take notice of an injustice and inspire them to take action. And that's what we hope to do - to try and stop injustice.
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The Other Side: An exhibition by Danial Shah
Danial Shah
The Other Side: An exhibition by Danial Shah
Faraar Gallery
Opening Reception: Sunday, 29th November 2015 | 7:00 pm
“This journey to me is a pilgrimage that has no start or an end. When you broaden your view of the world, you realize that there is not just one way of living.”
Two of Danial’s relentless passions in life are travel and photography. Allured by the overwhelming beauty of the changing geographical landscapes and sometimes the ugliness of unimaginable suffering and loss in his home country Pakistan, has helped him understand that all of our lives are at once interconnected and individual.
Experiencing other cultures, meeting people from diverse communities has shaped his compassionate view of the world. His images are evocative, thought-provoking and a poignant reminder of how traveling can sometimes be a brutality and a blessing.
With this exhibition titled ‘The Other Side’, Danial hopes to showcase the path that is less travelled and share some of the most extraordinary places and experiences that all of the aspiring vagabonds, adventure seekers and wilderness trekkers hope to travel to one day.
About:
Danial Shah is a documentary photographer and a writer. Originally from Quetta, he is now based in Karachi and teaches Photography as a visiting faculty member at the Karachi University and Institute of Business Management.
In 2010, Danial launched the first travel blog of Pakistan,iExplorePakistan.com, and traveled all across from south to the north and documented the diverse culture and landscape of the country. Based on his work, Danial was awarded Nishan-e-Azm (symbol of pride) and Travel Blogger of the year in 2011.
His photography portfolio is thematically geared towards travel, landscape, culture and archeology. He contributes stock photographs to Getty Images, and works with various publications like The New York Times, Dawn (Pakistan), Express Tribune Magazine (Pakistan), Herald (Pakistan), Himal SouthAsian (Nepal) and Trek&Mountain (UK).
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"Mapping class, migration, autobiography in the city: In conversation with Yaminay Chaudhri and Fazal Rizvi"
Yam inay Chaudhri and Fazal Rizvi
"Mapping class, migration, autobiography in the city: In conversation with Yaminay Chaudhri and Fazal Rizvi"
Faraar Gallery
Opening Reception: Sunday, 22nd November 2015 | 7:00 pm
Artists Yaminay Chaudhri and Fazal Rizvi will discuss the politics of mapping the city through art practice. They will share their research for a recent art publication, Exhausted Geographies, in which they explore themes of desire, longing and belonging in the city.
Exhausted Geographies is a radical engagement with the politics of representation and map-making in order to explore and produce new ways of seeing and imagining cities in the global south. This publication is a collection of 7 maps, each coupled with an essay, contributed by artists, architects, historians, urban planners, geographers and anthropologists working on/in Karachi. It is a coming together of different situated and localized knowledges to enable an exchange of ideas and methodologies beyond the borders of the academy and the art world. Using artistic and interdisciplinary research methods, the contributors subvert mapmaking into an open and critical medium to produce visual representations of space, temporality, politics and human relationships.
About:
Yaminay Chaudhri works with the emotional and physical architectures of longing, drawing on the precarious nature of place, home and cities. She uses multiple media including video, performance and text to recreate situations that are both intensely emotional and unexceptionally banal.
Chaudhri has a degree in architecture from Cornell University, and an MFA in combined media studio arts from State University of New York at Albany. She has taught at Karachi University, Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi, SZABIST, Karachi, the Aga Khan University, Karachi, and is the founder of the Tentative Collective.
Fazal Rizvi graduated from the National College of Arts, Lahore, in 2010. With an interdisciplinary practice encompassing painting, photography, installation, video and text, Rizvi explores notions around loss, migration, post-colonial identity and more. He has exhibited in Japan (Moriya), Paris, Moscow, Maastricht, London, Dundee as well as in Pakistan. He was selected for the Arcus Project Residency, Japan, in 2011 and was the recipient of the Charles Wallace Pakistan Trust and British Council Residency at Gasworks, London, 2014, and was in the Vasl International Artist Residency 2015 as the Art Writer in Residence.
For the love of the city, Rizvi initiated a project Chalo Chalo Lahore Chalo in 2012, which took shape of a collective, and after his move back to Karachi he couldn't help but become part of the Tentative Collective. He currently practices and teaches in Karachi.
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K-Eclectic
K-Eclectic
Faraar Gallery
Opening Reception: Sunday, 11th October 2015 | 4:00 pm
This October, PeaceNiche invites you to K-Eclectic, a renewed conceptual adaptation of our Faraar Gallery and Shop which has successfully served as a creative playground for established and emerging artists to get to know each other, interact with art enthusiasts, collectors and students to sell their artwork in a vibrant, approachable community setting
With the re-launch of our Faraar Gallery and Shop, we want to have a whole new line of innovative products, merchandise and artwork that strongly resonate with Karachi.
K-Eclectic will host a:
- Public Art & Multimedia Exhibit
- Bazaar (Contemporary and archival products that will relate to the theme of Karachi)
- Artist Talks
- Digital Projections
- Music & Food
SCHEDULE:
4:00 - 4:30 PM | K-Eclectic Opening
4:35 - 5:35 PM | Meet the Artists
5:40 - 6:40 PM | Karachi and its Changing Culture: A Talk with Hamida Khuhro, Akhtar Balouch and Asif Farrukhi
7:00 - 7:30 PM | Revisiting the Musical 70s with the Goan Christian band, In Time
7:40 - 9:00 PM | Live In Concert featuring In Time
All-Day Features
K-Eclectic: Faraar Bazaar
T2F Cafe Karachi Special: Chai & Street Food
Digital Showcase of images of Karachi
Entry: Rs. 300
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Monument Valley
JFrançois Chénin
Monument Valley
Faraar Gallery
Opening Reception: Wednesday, 10th September 2014 | 6:30 pm
"Monument Valley is a childhood remembrance, a journey, a particular relationship with pop art, a Wim Wenders film and a literally literary attempt.
I never liked painting; at best some drawings with China ink a long time ago, an attraction for architect’s designs, the use of rotring pen and ruler, the highlighting and white spaces, very little of blue in that period, above all red, grey, black, a good pair of scissors and glue, some collages with the help of cartoons, newspapers and the utilization of trichloroethylene in quest of superposition and transparence, above all faces on handwritten pages. As good as to confess that nothing destined me to picture-drawing.
This childhood was a patchwork, a sequence of instant sensations, reconstituted afterwards.
I am only preoccupied with the balance and the composition.
I move forward without theory only on the basis of infatuations and because I have an urge to see the paintings hanging on walls, in the books, on the canvas, I never tire of taking in images. Is it the painting or rather the composition and the emotional dizziness, which it conceals, that I feel which I swallow?
In Monument Valley, I compose.
Each component of the composition links me to a vision and to the particular instance of this vision. I compose the paintings like I write the sequels of my books: by diverting them, by turning them upside down and recomposing them until finding the correspondence between the thought and the “painting”.
In which it is question of journey
This journey is precisely Monument Valley in which I bring the pictorial space nearer to the pop art of big American spaces, in which the graphical intentions of the American paintings of 50’s and 70’s incorporate this natural space, which hesitates between the earth and the sky. From it also flows this attachment to the perspectives, whether open or intimate, always majestic, that a textual or pictorial composition allows me to draw.
I do not differentiate between a sequel and a painting
Reality and fiction get entwined, reality of the sentiments and fictional space which allows their exploration. The scores follow each other and reconstitute the emotions. “As far as the fascination is concerned, the ear has the music. The eye has the painting. The death has the past. Love has the naked body of the other. The literature has the individual language reduced to silence” wrote Pascal Quignard. The basic thing is to recommence. The compositions of Monument Valley bear the imprints of this ranting silence. One will never finish with writing.
“I know these people…” said Travis (Paris, Texas by Wim Wenders)
“Paris, Texas” seems to me the only homage paid to pop art by the cinema. This ambition of recommencing, putting together the pieces, reconstituting the past and the future, joining what remained separated; every thing is present in it. I follow this path whenever I write or compose so as not to resume a seemingly interrupted conversation on meeting again."
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