Written by: Tehreem Mela
Posted on: April 01, 2024 | 
| 中文
Bajour Droned by AR Nagori
Why can’t artists be used as references to history and viewed as political journalists of their time! The master artists of Pakistan engaged politically, socially and critically with the history they witnessed and left us with a treasure of symbols and questions. Art history can be an essential component in the Pakistan Studies curriculum, and my argument is borne out by the works of Abdul Rahim (AR) Nagori.
Professor Nagori studied at the University of Punjab in Lahore, and upon returning to Sindh, he was a prolific artist. His art was often censored due to its political message. He set up the Fine Arts Department at the Sindh University, Jamshoro. According to an article in the daily Dawn about the artist, his subject was about different national events of 1986, and he created a series of 40 paintings that included symbols of an alphabet based on bomb blasts, crime, dacoities, guns, heroin, Ojhri, Kalashnikov and the events of the previous years. He was given the Presidential Pride of Performance Award in 2010.
Nagori worked with primary colors, creating compositions including satirical portraits of dictators Yahya Khan and Zia ul Haq, as well as women in veils in the Lal Masjid violence. As a 27-year-old young person in Pakistan, I grew up with the same images. Perhaps the study of our Masters is essential to understand our shared political histories across generations. Unrest, dogs, army general Zia Ul Haq, veiled women, and Jinnah’s mausoleum are drawn in poster-like bold silhouettes, using symbolism to convey the cruelty of the state apparatus in Pakistan.
LAL MASJID HORROR
Paintings titled Dogs in Uniforms and illustrations of Israeli Defense Force (IDF) soldiers carving out borders in the Middle East, come across as though Nagori was painting about 2024. Another painting that captures a historical moment in Pakistan’s history is the Lal Masjid Horror (2007). With a clearly rigged election, recorded manipulation of the Supreme Court judges, and an eradication of Palestinian indigenous people and their race, Nagori is the voice of the politically marginalized or oppressed. He was an artist who empathized with other colonized people of the Global South.
Victory, 1982
His is an innovative use of illustration, color, imagery and naming of the paintings is an important lesson in Pakistan’s political history. Many paintings include images of women hunched over in veils or even tied up and nude. There is a moment where violence is depicted through a sharp silhouette of a dog or a hyena, in front of the mausoleum of Jinnah and a setting sun. In many paintings, the place of reference is situated at a distance in the composition, a mausoleum or a Supreme Court building made to represent the failure of an institution. The Mausoleum and the Supreme Court represent the promises unfulfilled, against a background of red skies, connoting the sinister, bloody, or tumultuous nature of the political moment itself. Sometimes the sky in the paintings is orange and sometimes blue, creating juxtapositions of state colors, ideologies or even the moods that the society may find itself in.
A painting by AR Nagori
Dogs are a repeated motif of violence, duplicity, regimented killing or betrayal of the people of Pakistan. Two dogs stand back-to-back, one with a green uniform and the other with a red and blue tie, while women and children are often depicted as victims of violence at the hands of an oppressive system.
Dogs in Uniforms
History and Pakistan Studies must be representative of our most prolific and celebrated artists in order to show the multiplicity of voices that recorded our history. Professor Nagori’s contributions to the field of recording Pakistan’s political and social decisions is an essential and important resource for students.
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