High Noon (II)

O latest issue, Granta 112: Pakistan, is published in the UK today – you can buy it online or in bookshops now (published in the US next Thursday). The issue was launched with a special event at Asia House in London last night.

For the visual essay in our the issue, we 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. This is the second instalment in our online presentation of the work. Look out for these posts 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).

See also:
High Noon (I) – Ayesha Jatoi, Bani Abidi and Rashid Rana
High Noon (III) – Mansur Salim, Mehreen Murtaza and Muhammad Zeeshan
High Noon (IV) - Naeem Mohaiemen, Ahmed Ali Manganhar and Mohammad Ali Talpur

IMRAN QURESHI

Time changes, 2008

Site-specific installation, Qasr-e-Malika (Queen’s Palace) Bagh-e-Babur, Kabul, Afghanistan. Emulsion and acrylics on marble floor and walls. Image courtesy of the artist and Turquoise Mountain, Afghanistan. Qureshi uses the motif of foliage from traditional miniatures as a form, a weedy organic growth that seeps into architectural space. This installation in Kabul interacted with the play of light from the windows on the gallery floor, shifting the image with the passage of time.

See more work by Imran Qureshi here, or read about his recent exhibitions at Asia House and Modern Art oxford.

NUSRA LATIF QURESHI

Detail from Did you come here to find history?, 2009

Digital print on transparent film, 65 x 870cm. Qureshi’s practice deals critically with the politics of representation, fragmenting dominant historical narratives. Borrowed images are reappropriated and transformed, obscuring or refusing their original meaning. This work is a combination of the artist’s own ID photos, Moghul miniature portraits, early colonial photography and portraits by Venetian painters.

Read more about Nusra Latif Qureshi, including lists of collections of her work, here – as well as on urbanart and Universes in Universe.

IFTIKHAR DADI

From Urdu Film Series, 1990-2009

C-print Diasec, 64 x 52cm. A suite of photographs of Urdu-language films shown on state-controlled television in the 1970s, examining television as a way of imagining and shaping collective ideas of ‘success’ or ‘urban modernity’ as exemplified by the interiors, fashion, personae and gestures of the films. Taken at slow shutter speeds, they capture scanning lines of the television screen and produce a grainy, blurred effect that suggests a dream or trance-like state, several steps removed from the ‘reality’ of the depicted scenes.

Read a profile of Iftikhar Dadi 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.