ART 'N' SOUL
Unusual journey

B. N. Goswamy on Karkhana, a collaborative work by six painters from Pakistan

THIS is a story about six contemporary painters who dreamt a different dream and set out, some years ago, to realise it. They are all from Pakistan even if they happen now to be in different locations: two of them are in Lahore, one in Jehlum, one in Chicago, one in Melbourne, and one in New York.

This apart, there was much else in their backgrounds that was common: they were all trained in the technique of miniature painting at the National College of Arts in Lahore; all of them had been touched by the vision of Salima Hashmi, once their principal, who urged them to see tradition as a springboard from which to take a leap into the future; all of them had things to say about the current reality of Pakistan; and all of them had an innate respect for one another’s talents.

So, in an inspired moment that was seized upon by Imran Qureshi, who took the lead, they decided to produce a collaborative work.

It is not easy to summarise the process here, for there are subtleties involved, and distances and organisational problems and different artistic sensibilities had all to be taken into account. Briefly, this is how it all proceeded: the miniature format taken for granted, and the size of the wasli-sheet having been agreed upon, one artist would make a work and send it off to the next to add to/alter/amend it in his/her own fashion, and then on to the next, and still the next, till all the six had had the "obligatory" opportunity to work upon the image.

A "final" product would emerge, often bearing evidence of having travelled, so to speak, considerably far from the point from which it began. In this manner, 12 works were produced, two each having been initiated by each artist. Karkhana, recalling the workshop practice of old, was how the
project was named.

And it is under this name that an exhibition of these works, accompanied by a fine catalogue that has just come out, opened at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut less than two months ago. The exhibition is scheduled to travel then to other locations: to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, next year, and to the Asia Society in New York the year after that.

The catalogue, apart from speaking of and reproducing not only every single painting produced in the Karkhana but also documenting each stage through which it passed, makes compelling reading.

For the six essays that go into it create a context, and raise issues. The practices followed in a Mughal workshop are looked at as much as the materials and techniques that the present artists use; there is exploration of the history of improvisations of this kind, and a discussion of whether the Karkhana project represents a revival or a re-invention; the politics of resistance embedded in the Karkhana work are inquired into, and the manner in which the project evolved is painstakingly and evocatively laid out. One learns of subversive tactics and political strategies, of the inherent conflict between individual authorship and collaboration, of colonial legacies and post-colonial dislocations.

But, after all intellectual underpinnings and the theoretical frameworks have been gone into and exhausted, it is the images that imprint themselves upon the mind, in the final analysis.

Take the case of a painting like Karkhana 4. It began simply with a real-looking, meticulously painted stamp in the top right hand corner, as on a postcard, complete with a cancellation mark from "Jhelum Pakistan", and dated 20.06.03, a ‘King’s Postage’ by Hasnat Mehmood.

When it reached Aisha Khalid in the form of a nearly blank wasli-sheet, she painted on the left half of it a burqa-clad woman that appears soft-footedly in so many of
her works.

Nusra Latif Qureshi drew above and around the lady shadowy outlines of two standing men and a prowling beast taken from a colonial photograph, faceless images of "arrogance and pomp" as she puts it; in the acerbic hands of Saira Wasim, a Mullah-like figure, symbol of orthodox authority, materialised, but with satyrs’ feet, riding the tiger and supporting a dish-antenna on his head.

Talha Rathore then strewed delicate little cypresses on the page almost softening the effect; and, finally, Imran Qureshi stamped unevenly his familiar and evocative bullet holes or dots across the kingly face on the stamp.

Put in words, it sounds a bit dry, perhaps, but as an image, it has a soaring quality: visually rich, light and grave at the same time, scattered but with its elements glued together, raising thoughts, lifting the spirit.

At the beginning of the Foreword which I was graciously asked to write for this volume, I recalled how miniatures of old used to be likened to couplets from a ghazal: terse, precious, and filled with resonances.

Somehow, with all the changes, and all the contemporary air that the works in the Karkhana breathe, these are the qualities they still possess. Journeys begin, and journeys end. But there is something that binds the travellers together. Especially when they find along the way what they were looking for.

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