Art beyond boundaries

The ‘Sensation’ moment for Pakistani art may have passed with ‘Hanging Fire’ at the Asia Society in New York in 2009 where, to neologise, YPAs (Young Pakistani Artists) had the opportunity to display their version of the errant, eye-catching tactics the YBAs (Young British Artists) so effectively tried in the 1990s: Rashid Rana’s Persian carpet, which on closer inspection transforms into thousands of miniscule images of slaughter in abattoirs; Huma Mulji’s taxidermic cows dangling from pylons or fluted, ionic columns; Imran Qureshi’s seemingly harmless but subliminally threatening bearded men; Anwar Saeed’s stylised homoerotic images of men in langots; and Arif Mahmood’s consternation-filling, gun-toting urchin on a Karachi beach – but, seven years on, its progenitors continue to be in fine fettle.

27 January 2016