Curators are sprouting like weeds in Pakistan’s art world. A gallery manager, a recent graduate, a mid-career practitioner, an art teacher, an eager writer—even an occasional collector—can suddenly transform into a curator. Most of them are temporary or amateur. These days, it is rare to receive an exhibition invitation that does not bear a curator’s name.
A curator cannot be easily compared with another, but the rise of this title has made the public acknowledge and respect the role of those who are neither makers, buyers, nor gallery owners, but mediators guiding viewers to look at the work (not always new) through a different lens.
What happens when viewers themselves become curators, finding links in the work on display? It is like connecting dots to form a coherent picture: a challenging task, but a rewarding one, leaving behind a sense of achievement. Unaware of how viewers may respond, the designer of the puzzle allows for multiple possibilities. The work is open to anyone who engages and interprets.
A similar experience could be found at *The Shape of Seeing*, curated by Ammar Aziz. The exhibition, held from September 20 to October 5, also marked the opening of ZQ Gallery, a new space in Lahore. Not only because of its location—a narrow street lined with small houses, luxury car showrooms, and lanes of automobile workshops—but also because of the group of artists chosen for its inaugural show, the exhibition has surprised spectators.
Names not usually seen together on a single list appear side by side. The work varies in content, date, technique, medium, genre, and scale. Adding further to the diversity, some are internationally acclaimed figures, while others are relatively unknown or less widely circulated. In that sense, the exhibition lives up to its title, *The Shape of Seeing*.
It offers a rare chance to view art in a hybrid setting: a residential-type space adjoining a white cube gallery. This blend, perhaps born of practical necessity, also raises questions about the disjunction between art created in a studio, displayed in a gallery, and ultimately housed in a corporate building or grand residence.
Some of the work in the show actively responds to the surroundings. Masooma Syed’s *Leaning Shadows*, for instance, occupies a corner that amplifies the lustrous presence of her chandelier-like suspended sculpture. Similarly, Hamra Abbass’ small, minimal marble relief is set in a dimly lit, intimate space, heightening its quiet impact.
In terms of thematic connection, the exhibition invites viewers to search for their own clues; each individual, one assumes, constructs a personal version. Yet a common thread runs through the work. Risham Hosain Syed’s *Texts and Contexts* series from 1996 (painted at the Royal College of Art, London) sits alongside Ayaz Jokhio’s cubit titled *Mugshots* (2024, Back to Basic, Articulate Studios, Lahore), which depicts the unfolding sides of an ordinary teacup.
These are displayed next to Ali Kazim’s two delicate dry pigments on mylar: *Untitled (Cloud Series)* and *Untitled (Lightning Series)*, both from 2019, and Anwar Saeed’s emotive digital piece *Undie ID* (2012). Together, they affirm the timelessness of art.
Read one way, the inaugural show at ZQ Gallery (part of the Zeenat Qureshi Institute of Digital and Regional Arts and Culture) seems to aim at transcending the limitations of time, while also discarding the conventional classification of artists by style, status, or stance.
This is reinforced by the presence of two artworks by Masooma Syed. One is an installation fashioned from old glassware, bottles, beads, chandelier parts, an iron frame, and warm lights. Nearby hangs her large mixed-media work on paper, created primarily with Indian newspapers, its strokes suggesting a European couple rendered in the colonial period. This echo of history is also present in Risham Hosain Syed’s diptych: one panel patterned with the motif of disappearing Victorian lace, the other containing a small but insistent frame within a frame, depicting two men on a motorbike looking at the roadside aftermath of a political protest—a crossroads of vernacular setting and imported turmoil.
Curators are sprouting like weeds in Pakistan’s art world. Those who are neither makers nor buyers nor gallery owners are guiding viewers to look at the work through a different lens.
The presence of the indigenous feels most evident in the exhibits grouped together as *The Shape of Seeing*, even if neither the makers nor, perhaps, the curator consciously intended it. In their materials, concerns, imagery, and issues, many of the artworks seem to narrate the stories of this land. Yet these are not tales buried in the cellars of the soil; rather, they remain in dialogue with narratives from across the world, contributing to an inclusive, diverse, and expansive human account of experiences and emotions.
Consider *Kalila wa-Dimna*, a collection of fables whose animal protagonists trace their origins to the Panchatantra, yet whose content also echoes in Aesop’s fables and, centuries later, in twentieth-century cartoons: Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse, Universal’s Woody Woodpecker, MGM’s Tom and Jerry, and a long line of other animated characters. Where or when a story began, or how it continues to be retold, matters less. Creative overlaps demonstrate how artistic expressions stick to one another, often without the intention or awareness of their makers.
In this light, Ali Kazim’s brooding skies with a solitary cloud or streak of lightning; Muhammad Ashraf’s scar-like, red impasto surfaces; Imran Ahmed Khan’s paintings and sculptures inspired by the Indus Valley Civilisation, particularly Mehrgarh; and Hamra Abbass’ *Waterfall Drawings*, born of her intensive research into Mughal pietra dura motifs and transformed into a language of geometry and modern art—all point back to this land, its history, its climate, and its shifting realities.
Geography is never complete without its inhabitants. The two often intermingle, as can be seen in the work of Sajjad Ahmed, Shahid Mirza, and Sumera Jawad. Many other artists too have drawn attention to the plight of people trapped in their environment—a community struggling to negotiate questions of identity, individual choice, gender preference, and psychological pressure, perhaps all intertwined.
Anwar Saeed and Mohsin Shafi, in their imagery, explore society’s fixation with the body; its paranoia over power; and its perverse pleasure in subjugation. Rabeya Jalil’s jittery lines, seismic marks, and impulsive layers of paint respond to these very pressures. They suggest how external forces compel human beings to act in prescribed ways: what begins in anguish eventually hardens into habit, even into pleasure, until the two opposing sensations become indistinguishable.
In Jalil’s paintings, the misery of her characters is rendered with an almost playful delight. The scenario is grasped at first glance, yet its echoes can be traced, in different forms, throughout the other works in the exhibition.
In truth, this is the leitmotif of art in our present place and time. Whether one exhibition presents a clear curatorial vision or another appears indifferent to such agendas, both reflect the same reality. They are two sides of the same coin—the currency of art in Pakistan, and perhaps beyond.
https://www.thenews.com.pk/tns/detail/1348308-viewers-as-curators
