Written by: Nimra Khan
Posted on: January 12, 2024 | 
| 中文
Tradition & Tension
As part of a culture which has only recently untethered itself from the clutches of colonization, and one which is still struggling to decolonize itself in a world where it is becoming exceedingly clear that independence and freedom was merely a façade and colonialism in fact persists, just in different garb, Pakistani artists are in a constant state of grappling with the notion of identity and negotiating their reality in relation to the past. The bloody history of the region has seen the rise and fall of many empires, and while the motivations behind these conquests ranged from territorial expansion to economic exploitation, the additional social and psychological effects it continues to have, permeate every facet of our lives today.
Making-Remaking - 2
Miniature artist Asif Ahmed’s latest solo show, A Matter of Time, at Sanat Initiative explores themes of post-coloniality, cultural Imperialism and exploitation, and the ways in which the passage of time molds and shapes an entire nation and its traditions, using the miniature technique as both medium and metaphor. His work employs a process of building a visual vocabulary from a blend of historical sources, executed in traditional miniature techniques fused with allegorical devices that are superimposed as simplified line drawings to make a comment.
A Noble Portrait - 2
Many of the works feature iconography borrowed from various miniature sources, maintaining a certain level of ambiguity in the identity of the subjects by using bystanders in royal court scenes, rather than the main protagonists. These images of royal subjects, soldiers, princes, birds and flowers are repeated multiple times, each iteration in various stages of the drawing process, some faded, while others smudged or erased, some left untreated or blacked out, while some extremely detailed. Different versions are also recreated in different color palates. It alludes to the rise and fall of empires, golden periods and downfalls, end of eras and new beginnings, and also cultural erasure at the hands of the colonizer. This is evident in the Making-Remaking series, and the Similarities and Differences series.
Similarities & Differences - 4
Through this the artist also creates an underlying meta commentary on the tradition of miniature painting itself, and the various stages it has been put through, its various transformations, divisions into different schools, styles and forms. The recent revival of miniature painting brings it into the present time and keeps it alive as an art form in its own right, with its own rules, customs and visual structure, rather than merely a primitive, oriental form of visual expression and image making. However, the colonizers regarded themselves and their ideals as the epitome of human civilization, and the yardstick against which to measure the rest of the world’s supposedly inferior cultures.
A Royal Elephant
The superimposed line drawings take the form of objects comparatively modern to the images they appear upon, together creating a narrative of cultural hegemony. In A Royal Elephant and A Noble Portrait, a series of works in which the symbol of a mousetrap is used for the British Raj luring the Mughals with trade opportunities and riches and a display of cultural superiority, only to entrap them and seize control of the region for almost a century.
In End of an Era – 2, two Mughal portraits, one straight, one upside down, feature the image of a British Pistol, which again acts as a symbol for the Raj bringing about the downfall of the Mughal rule through overt and covert violence. End of an Era 5 and 6 feature the line drawing of an oxygen mask over the Mughal portraits, which indicate the critical condition of the Mughal empire drawing its last dying breaths, as Western depictions of the cupid in bright gold loom overhead to cast the final blow.
End of an Era - 6
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