Art
The Rise of Contemporary Art in Karachi, Pakistan
How a city of mercantiles and migrants, driven by a love for the arts, breathed new life into Pakistan’s contemporary art scene.
Dust, debris and dilapidated buildings. At first glance, Karachi is not considered to be one of Pakistan’s most conventionally beautiful cities. Far from the picturesque green meadows and clear blue skies abundant in Pakistan’s Northern regions, Karachi is an industrial hub and commercial megacity, overpopulated with almost 15 million inhabitants.
But in recent decades, Karachi has revealed that -- underneath its dusty exterior -- this city is a breeding ground for flourishing, developing, nurturing and elevating contemporary art on a national scale.
What does contemporary art look like in Karachi?
On a global scale, contemporary Pakistani art has largely been recognized for two movements: truck art and neo-miniature art.
Truck art -- now a staple on Karachi’s busy streets -- began as a form of decoration in which artists elaborately adorned trucks and buses with bright colours and calligraphy, as well as political and social messages.
Over time, the art form has extended beyond the streets, and can now be seen on everything from shoes to teapots.
This growth is largely thanks to contemporary artists like Karachi born and bred Haider Ali, who has exhibited his distinctive truck art style to museums and exhibitions across the world.
NADIRA, a car painted by Haider Ali to represent Pakistan in US
© CARMADA
Similarly, neo-miniature art has been championed by famous Pakistani artists such as Shahzia Sikander and Imran Qureshi, who have shared their modern approach on traditional miniature art on a global scale.
But contemporary art in Karachi is so much more than truck and neo-miniature art. Karachi is inherently diverse. One of the region’s largest, oldest and busiest ports, the city has a long history of welcoming people, trade and opportunity from across the country and the world.
An undeniably vibrant and exciting ethnic and cultural mixing pot, Karachi is defined by the amalgamation of people, places and personalities that choose to make the historically turbulent city their own.
Artist: Muhammad Zeeshan
© Amean J
“Karachi is where the work is, where the workers are. It’s where business has always been in Pakistan. I am not from Karachi but I have come to Karachi because this is where we artists can find opportunity” says Muhammad Zeeshan, artist and curator of Karachi’s second upcoming Biennial, Karachi Biennale 2019.
“So, what is contemporary art in Karachi? It is art, today, in Karachi. Simple. Artists have access to so many different kinds of mediums now. It can be anything and everything”.
Sameera Raja
© Canvas Gallery
Last year, Karachi introduced its first and largest public contemporary art show, Karachi Biennale 2017 to the city for two weeks. With no support from the State, private sponsors and patrons of the arts took it upon themselves to take local contemporary art out onto the streets.
The exhibition featured a range of works curated by second-generation contemporary artist Amin Gulgee - from ‘calli-graffiti’ to sound installations and everything in between.
Public, private, public again:
A young, developing country that has endured an undoubtedly volatile journey since its inception, public art has taken the backseat with Pakistan’s public sector. They don’t have the same access to art as other major cities around the world, like New York or Venice. That is not to say that art is entirely disregarded by the State - government-run National College of Arts (NCA) in Lahore is ranked as one of Pakistan’s top art schools, along with Karachi’s privately-run Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture (IVS).
However, the general public that chooses not to independently pursue art, simply doesn’t have easy access to public art initiatives. As a result, private galleries and institutions like IVS, Vasl Artists’ Collective, I AM KARACHI and Karachi Biennale - to name a few - are left with the responsibility of bringing art to the public, a responsibility that has proven crucial in making Karachi a hotbed for the country’s burgeoning art scene.
The artist finally meets an audience
But why Karachi, and not any of the Pakistan’s other major urban hubs? Karachi’s competitive edge comes from its galleries. These galleries began as a series of initiatives over the past few decades to formalize the appreciation of contemporary art and artists.
This movement, lead to a shift in Pakistan’s art scene forever - opening audiences’ eyes to a plethora of local talent across the country.
One such of example of this is Sameera Raja, owner of Canvas Gallery. Raja herself entered the industry twenty years ago, when only a handful of galleries -- Chawkandi Art, VM, Indus Gallery -- were open at the time.
Abid Merchant
© Stefano Spinelli
Keen to build a space that elevated the cutting-edge work young artists were producing at the time, Raja would personally build a community of art lovers within her friends and family, initiating a movement that has since mushroomed to shape the way Pakistan’s enthusiast interact with local contemporary art and artists today.
Similarly, Abid Merchant, owner of Sanat Initiative and an art collector, left his career in banking 6 years ago to pursue a calling to provide a space and residency program for emerging artists to connect with their art and society with a contemporary approach.
What describes itself as platform for providing “ground-breaking projects” that offer “experimental and innovative streams of thought in art”, Sanat Initiative has also built a database of all of its artists and exhibitions on its website.
Artist: Muhammad Zeeshan
© Sanat Initiative
The website documents the work of mostly Pakistani artists for a mostly Pakistani audience - a significant effort towards developing the art gallery scene into a sophisticated source of information and knowledge.
Of course, until the public sector is able to take the appreciation of art to a wider audience, the efforts of private galleries, private institutions and patrons of the arts in Karachi cannot make the impact they may hope for. But nevertheless, they have - knowingly or unknowingly - started a movement that champions contemporary local art and has transformed the city’s art scene into a vibrant, exciting space that has attracted some of Pakistan’s - and the world’s - greatest artists to the city.