Zoomlink: Artist Conversation, Lahore
Artist Conversation happening today
This is last minute but if you can make it, please come to our zoom conversation today with myself and artists curated within Fatma Shah’s exhibition “Tomorrow isn’t promised” at 11 Temple Rd, Lahore.
Topic: Meet The Artists of Tomorrow Isn't Promised a collateral event LBF
Time: Oct 30, 2024 05:00 PM Islamabad, Karachi, Tashkent
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us04web.zoom.us/j/74413208498?pwd=zAJqriTQNalrooqzI4jpnoHKsn0Otb.1
Meeting ID: 744 1320 8498
Passcode: uEvw3D
I will talk about my practice as a critic, perfumer and artist. I will also show you all the pop-ups I painted last year expressly to steal the art out of the institution to in order to circumvent their profit-source of copyright-fees and muddle their idea of authenticity and sense of control.
These playful mini-paintings of Mughal and Rajput banana trees, rose bushes and kewra clusters emerged from a bizarre email threat from the Smithsonian regarding my copyright violations of their 18th century paintings. I’ve already discussed this in a previous newsletter*, but I want to emphasise how much this incident exposed how museums and their academic fellows rush to impose gatekeeping.
*More here:
When I was mapping out Bagh-e Hind in 2021, I was told by a junior academic that I should “not be profiting from this”. This being accessing my own history and heritage and making a living as an artist. I have been told the same in other ways since.
Puritan brahmin-scholars who don’t question their own sources of funding have told me how problematic my “Gift shop” is, or that it is tricky for them to ally with me because I “turn knowledge into products”. So, if perfumery and soap were not going to be accepted as legitimate mediums of art - in an age where these very people will argue that art can be anything - I was going to beat them at their own game by painting.
Good thing I did, because when I had a virtual meeting with an American museum curator last year, the first thing she asked rather bluntly was “do you run a business?! is [Bagh-e Hind] a business?!”
I happily responded by holding up my little Rajput tree pop-ups and said, “Look, I paint, look at my Art”. HA! HA! HA!
Such episodes have pushed me to think more seriously about the fact that the only position I authentically hold as a critic, is one of the outsider-antagonist. Hence, my appearance as a “monster” in this polite society garden. More below:
After 2022, I consciously divested from museums and art-world systems by refusing to apply for residencies, grants, fellowships, biennales, symposium panels, or draft exhibition proposal/applications. Business it is. If anyone wants to work with me, they can come find me on my terms.
This ran longer than I thought it would but come see me today over zoom if you can. it will be a free-flowing cross-border conversation with me in India and other artists from Pakistan!
PS: If there is a recording, I will update this newsletter with the link here.