High Noon (I)

For the visual essay in our new issue, ‘Pakistan’, we have collaborated with Green Cardamom – an organisation which focuses on international contemporary art viewed from an Indian Ocean perspective. With their help, we selected fourteen prominent figures from the contemporary art scene in Pakistan, and reproduced their work in the magazine. You can buy the issue online now, or in bookshops from Thursday 16 September (UK) and Thursday 23 September (US). Over the next five weeks we will be posting the work on our website as well, every Thursday - with information about the artists and links to follow for anyone wanting to find out more. (You can read about Green Cardamom here and on Facebook). This week, we are pleased to present work by Ayesha Jatoi, Bani Abidi and Rashid Rana.

See also:
High Noon (II) - Imran Qureshi, Nusra Latif Qureshi and Iftikhar Dadi
High Noon (III) - Mansur Salim, Mehreen Murtaza and Muhammad Zeeshan
High Noon (IV) - Naeem Mohaiemen, Ahmed Ali Manganhar and Mohammad Ali Talpur

AYESHA JATOI

Clothesline, 2006

Dyed garments on fighter jet, C-print, photograph of installation/performance. Image courtesy of the artist and Asif Khan. Decommissioned aircraft and armaments – missile casings, old jets and once even a massive submarine – are frequently installed as public monuments, indicative of the presence of the military in the civic realm. In this performative act of resistance, the artist washed a load of red garments and then draped them across the aircraft to dry.

BANI ABIDI

Detail from The Ghost of Mohammad bin Qasim, 2006

Pari Wania, 7.42 p.m., 22 August 2008, Ramadan, Karachi.

Ashish Sharma, 7.44 p.m., 23 August 2008, Ramadan, Karachi.

Chandra Acharya, 7.50 p.m., 30 August 2008, Ramadan, Karachi.

Jerry Fernandez, 7.45 p.m., 21 August 2008, Ramadan, Karachi.

Karachi Series 1, 2009

Duratrans Lightbox, 50.8 x 76.2cm each. At dusk during the month of Ramadan most Muslims in Karachi are breaking their fasts, leaving the streets eerily empty. Abidi imaginatively reclaims public space by allowing the streets to be occupied by ordinary citizens from religious minorities – Hindu, Parsi (Zoroastrian) and Christian – who are part of the shared history of the city, but increasingly less visible.

See more of Bani Abidi’s work at baniabidi.com

RASHID RANA

Identical Views

Edition of 10, C-print, Diasec, 194 x 197cm. This is a composite image of photographs that could be from a video or a stop-motion animation. Frame by frame, the artist dresses himself, changing garb several times, reinventing his image. In the ‘mirror’ image the process is reversed, but does not correspond perfectly, creating a sense of dissonance.

Visit the Rashid Rana Studio on Facebook.

Buy our Pakistan issue today by clicking here

See also... our cover for the issue, a special commission made to Karachi-based truck artist Islam Gull. Web exclusives include a new translation of a short story by Saadat Hasan Manto, ‘Road to Chitral’ – Azhar Abidi’s travelogue and meditation on Pakistan’s cycle of violence – and ‘Power Failure’, Bina Shah’s essay on the ongoing electricity crisis in Karachi.