Written by: Jovita Alvares
Posted on: May 24, 2018 | 
| 中文
Courtesy of Metropolitan Museum
On 22nd May, 2018, ‘Look, Look Again,’ a solo display of works by Pakistani artist and National College of Arts alum, Hasnat Mehmood, opened at Koel Gallery, Karachi. The show features drawings, sculptural works and performance/audience-participatory pieces. The artist is widely acclaimed, having displayed work both nationally and internationally, including in the collections of British Museum and Fukuoka Museum, Japan. He was also part of the well-known travelling show, ‘Karkhana,’ which eventually exhibited in Asian Art Museum, San Francisco and Aldrich Contemporary Museum, Connecticut.
Inspired by post-colonial effects and neo-colonial practices, Mehmood’s works for this exhibition highlighted the mistreatment of artefacts that art markets and its establishments have been a part of. His drawings were predominantly divided into two types of visuals: replications of paintings and of sculptures. All the sculptural recreations are from the Harappan civilization of Pakistan, which existed around 3000 BC along the Indus River, in the province of Punjab. Its discovery, along with the city of Mohenjo-Daro, is considered the greatest achievement of the Indus Valley civilization, and a sense of pride is attached to this important piece of the country’s history. However, as each of Mehmood’s drawings reveal, the excavated findings are displayed in other parts of the world (like New Delhi, India), instead of Pakistan. This unfortunate circumstance is due to a lack of security and concern shown by the government towards local museums. In fact, on a visit a few years ago to a museum in Karachi, the caretaker informed our group of the constant robbing of original artefacts from the space, which are later sold at high prices in the black market.
Mehmood’s recreation of paintings involves text, making the overall visual of an informative nature rather than just an aesthetic one. The text seems gibberish at first, with no real start or end, no context given and with the edges cut out, thereby leaving sentences incomplete. In his piece ‘Cave Art, Jo Merchant’, there seems to be a drawing of ancient cave art, though its lack of colour causes abstraction. The writing on the work is an excerpt from Jo Merchant’s essay ‘A Journey to the Oldest Cave Paintings in the World.’ Jo Merchant is an award winning science journalist and writer, and the article was published in the Smithsonian Magazine. It talks about how before the discovery of cave paintings in Indonesia, Europe was thought to be the main area where they existed. Unfortunately, despite discoveries of older paintings in places like Africa and Indonesia, Merchant goes on to explain that European cave paintings are still celebrated as the most important and intellectual works of the lot. This becomes an example, then, of the persistent whitewashing carried out by neo-colonial powers, which attempt to place Western and European civilizations on a pedestal.
Throughout the entire exhibition, Mehmood’s skill is undeniably evident. From afar, each drawing looks like a Xerox print, faded and monochromatic. It is only upon closer inspection that we notice the swirls of rendering with graphite, and realise that it’s a drawing. The idea of imitating photocopied prints, adds to the historic idea of the work, as well as imitating how textbooks share such history, therefore adding to the concept of informative usage of the images. It could also be considered a comment on the number of imitations we see today, literal photocopies.
The artist also includes participatory pieces in the exhibition. In one section, the viewer is made to put on a glove and view tiny text through a magnifying glass, much like museum workers and excavators. The second piece allowed the audience to pick up clay pottery and shatter it in the gallery space. Such pottery is a common sight in Pakistan, being sold by multiple vendors and easily available at nurseries. With its low price and commonality, we forget its cultural value, and this performance was a way to remind the audience of its significance.
The show continues till May 31st, 2018.
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