the
OCCASIONAL SHOPPER
O f f icial Publication of The National College of A r ts, Lahore
Wednesday, December 7 th, 2011 302 nd Day of the 136 th Academic Year
Shopper Tip #04 If you can’t deliver on time just pretend to be occasional
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The Occasional What? Not so long ago, there was a tradition. A tradition that brought every man/woman/being who roamed the corridors and courtyards of NCA into a state of constant vigilance. It was the tradition of THE SHOPPER! Yes, a plastic bag full of water, emerging from nowhere, without any prior warning and climatically exploding on impact against you. It was a moment of shock and awe. More so, it was a moment of the glorious realization that you were, indeed, now soaking wet. Long gone are those days, but despair no longer for THE SHOPPER makes its return in another form altogether, rising up(or falling, one may argue) again to give you the attention that YOU need!
Feedback
The Team Editors Madyha Leghari
Layout & Design Muhammad Ahmad Khan
Reporters
Haider Ali (Layout)
Zoya Gul Hasan
Sanwal Tariq
Sania Azhar
Uswa Amjad
Naima Ansari
Hadia Zahra
Zara Asghar
Sabah Zaman
Zoona Jerral
Syed Hasan Haider
Sana Zulfiqar
If you would like to be a part of the Shopper send in you work/ articles/photography at our email
theoccasionalshopper@gmail.com
Management
Areeba Maqsood
Sundus Moein
Zain Naqvi (Illustrator)
Abu Bakr Asif
The Occasional Shopper is also available as an E-Mag and you can also keep track on Facebook:
http://theoccasionalshopper.wordpress.com/ http://www.facebook.com/theoccasionalshopper
E x c l u s iv e
ASMA ARSHAD MAHMOOD r e p o rt
WALLED CITY I I M PORT
ANNIE KILDE BAJWA F E ATUR E D STU D E NT
KHADIJA SHAFQAT
From the Editor
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very so often in our educational pursuits we come across situations that demand from us to think and act beyond our academic curriculum. In such circumstances, we need to not only be all ears and be understanding, but also be vocal and demanding. What type of an education do we want? What do we want to learn? Who do we want this instruction from? It is in such circumstances that aside from being dictated to be moulded in a particular fashion, we need to realize and follow up on the person we want to make of ourselves.
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SARAH HASHMI F eatu r ed G r ad u ate
ATIA QUADRI submissions
ANUM LASHARIE
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HASHIM ALI CHOUDHARY MUHAMMAD HAROOM AKRAM R E PORT
AL-HAMRA OPEN STUDIO RESIDENCY LITE R ATUR E
TITBITS OF BLISS
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For your own benefit I hope you choose to stand strong then; for your own benefit I plead for you to stand strong now. Winds of Change Students of Fatima Jinnah Women University, Rawalpindi Curated by Asim Akhtar 25 th Nov 2011 - 6 th Dec 2011 9:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. except Sundays Section Yellow Works by Bani Abidi 26 th Nov 2011 - 13 th Jan 2011 Grey Noise - 26 A, KB Colony, St. 4, Airport Road, Lahore Cantt.
THERE IS NO FINE LINE
5:00 p.m. - 9: 00 p.m.
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Gallery visit by appointment only. Mobile: 0300-429-8196 Margin Vasl - Taza Tareen Residency 2011 Works by Ayesha Kamal, Ayesha Zulfiqar, Habib Phulpoto, S.M. Raza, Zaineb Siddiqui 26 th Nov 2011 - 3 rd Dec 2011
Exhibitions Galore!
COLONIAL INDIA
In the lives we will live beyond the institutions we are groomed in, we will carry a liability as individuals, for what we do in our professional practice and how we do it. Then, how many of us will stand strong with our belief and our ideals, and how many of us will step back and let a mockery be made of our lives.
Alhamra Arts Council, Gallery 3 & 4
AGAINST THE GODS
A RC H IV E S
With whatever has happened and continues to take place in our college, city, country and the world, the need of the hour is to be sure of who we want to be, and to act upon it. However, there is always that fine line between ignorance and awareness. We must shun blind fellowship and ignorant ranting, and promote patient understanding of the sea of knowledge rushing our way, whichever ideological source it may originate from.
Rohtas 2 - 156, Block G, Model Town 11:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m. Conch Curve Creation Works by Wardha Shabbir, Dua Abbas, Ali Asad Naqvi Opening date: 14 th Dec 2011 The Drawing Room 12:00 a.m. - 8:00 p.m. except Sundays Solo Show Khalil Chisti 5 th Dec 2011 - 17 th Dec 2011 Rohtas 2- 156, Block G, Model Town 11:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m.
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EXCLUSIVE
Asma Arshad Mahmood Madyha Leghari | Third Year Fine Arts
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sma Arshad Mahmood is a reputed Canadian media and visual artist; the festival director for Mosaic Festival, one of the largest South Asian multi-disciplinary arts festivals held in North America; and a member of the board of directors for many organizations over the years including South Asian Visual Arts Collective, Canadian Community Arts Initiative, Art City and Mississauga Arts Council. She recently held a lecture at the National College of Arts about her professional practice. Asma started off with romantic figurative paintings as she worked as an apprentice to Mansoor Rahi and Raja Changez Sultan, respectively. However, once she relocated to Canada, Asma was forced to reconsider her practice in light of a competitive art market and the fresh challenges posed by a novel context. In retrospect, Asma admits to The Occasional Shopper team, that her responses thereon, emerged as deeply activist as well as being personally relevant. Moreover, she also overstepped the comfort of the canvas to explore more interactive and integrated media like installations. Often, Asma’s work deals with the problematic dynamics of identifying identity from the misshapen convoluted mass she is presented with as a South Asian immigrant woman (or as a South Asian, as an immigrant and as a woman, because one is not necessarily always tied to the other). Particularly, Asma traces out her interest in the shalwar as a visual manifestation of the irony that lies in the manifold meanings associated with the garment. Asma admits that her interest is fed by her own experience of living in two contrasting societies and how to her own daughters
the shalwar appears to be a poufy inconvenient garment. On the one hand it is seen as representational of culture, religious leaning and tradition spanning a few centuries. It is therefore, considered comforting and somewhat empowering. However, on the other hand, it is symbolically seeped in patriarchal tradition and covert latent sexuality. Moreover, as a third party, Europe has increasingly started to view such representational garments as oppressive and condemnable as is evident from the recent ban on Hijab imposed in France, the perverse effect of which has effectively placed women who still wear the Hijab under a virtual house arrest. Drawing this confusion in parallel with the formal shape of the garment, Asma writes: ‘The simplicity of the pattern of the shalwar is in sharp contrast to the complex form it takes when worn. To me, this is similar to what has happened to Muslim faith as is practiced now; the simplicity and modernity of a fourteen hundred year old faith is corrupted and transformed into the complex dogmatic shape of today. I interpret the clergy’s role as the drawstring of the shalwar which pulls its straight simple lines into a bulky disguise’. Aptly titled, ‘Three Yards of Dogma’, this series of work includes drawings that liken the shape of the garment with certain architectural elements of historical or personal spaces. One of these is a drawing of two walls running parallel to each other into an infinite recess. It is titled ‘East is East’ after the ominous blatant lines by Kipling: ‘Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet’ Another project in the same series was a video installation titled ‘Into, Out of and Away’. Asma lists Betty Goodwin’s work as striking a powerful chord with her which eventually led to this installation. Goodwin often works around weaving the presence of her deceased father into images of vests. Her father owned a vest factory and passed away when she was just nine. Therefore, her recall is, at best, vague of something that her father may only be ethereally reminiscent of. Asma lets a similar romance of memory immerse her work by capturing on tape, a recollection of an act that was once possibly more relevant to her than it is today i.e. donning a shalwar. However, at the same time as the installation moves away from mere documentation, she is distancing the self from the laden meanings of the shalwar
Three Yards of Dogma, 2009: The Kite.
EXCLUSIVE as a woman, shown below the calf, sheds it in the video. These contrasting meanings also highlight the perceptible tension between two generations of immigrants, their conflicting values about identity and the indoctrinated fear of the consequences of refusal to submit. Accompanying this video was a display of donated shalwars by women with a note from each donor. Remarkable, though, was the note unaccompanied by a shalwar, written by a contemporary miniature painter, Tazeen Qayyum: ‘As much as I appreciate your project/concept and would like to support it, I am not comfortable in lending my shalwar for display…Strangely, if you would have asked me to lend a worn out pair of jeans, I would not have even thought twice about it before giving it to you. Your project made me realize that how deeply embedded our cultural conditioning is, where throughout our lives we are constantly reminded to “cover the shalwar”’. Asma’s generation has, admittedly, witnessed tempestuous waters as far as Pakistan’s political climate is concerned. Therefore, when she was invited to Dhaka for an exhibition, painful conflicting memories of an eight year old remerged from the forgotten cobwebbed corners of a forty seven year old mind. She remembers too well, the film that plays in her mind stemming from her mother’s description of her grandfather boarding the last plane of PIA from Dhaka with his shoes soaked in blood. Upon his arrival in Karachi, he sat in the veranda of his house and wept with relief and anguish. Moreover, as a daughter of an army officer, Asma remembers the painful sting of humiliation that an eight year old possibly didn’t fully understand but which was to inform her teenage nevertheless. However, looking at Dhaka afresh, Asma is haunted by the pull of a history, lost as the country’s collective memory was whitewashed. Over the course of this visit, she delves into the poetry of Kazi Nazurl Islam, a revolutionary Bengali poet, whose works have ceased to be widely familiar in Pakistan not only because of linguistic barriers but also because his association with Bengali nationalists was deemed ‘problematic’ by the establishment. He evokes Bengal powerfully with the following: ‘If one person is insulted, it is a shame to all mankind, an insult to all! Today is the grand uprising of the agony of universal man’ Similarly, he champions the struggle against human suffering by writing an ironic ode to Daridro which means poverty or pain: ‘O poverty, thou hast made me great… To thee I owe, My insolent naked eyes and sharp tongue… No right have I to rejoice, Poverty weeps within my doors forever, As my spouse and my child, Who will play the flute?’ From the other side of the divide, it was Faiz’s poetry that hit home with its poignancy, mournful sense of fracture and yet an unmistakable sense of hope for an inevitable brighter future: ‘Hum ke thehre ajnabi, kitni mudaraton ke baad Phir banain ge aashna kitni mulaqaaton ke baad Kab nazar mein aaye gi bedagh sabze ki bahar Khoon ke dhabbay dhulain ge kitni barsatoon ke baad’
Writing an apology to Bangladeshi citizens on the wall of Tavoli Gallery, Dhaka.
And perhaps the one that eventually made her tip: ‘Bol ke lab azad hain tere, Bol zubaan ab tak teri hai… Bol ye thora waqt bohat hai Jism-o-zuban ki maut se pehle Bol ke sach zinda hai ab tak Bol jo kuch kehna hai keh le’ As these momentous words resonated though her mind, Asma scribbled an apology on the wall of Tavoli Gallery in Dhaka while drawings of her recollection of Bengal were displayed alongside. Interestingly, her language of choice was Urdu which meant most visitors to the gallery would not bat an eyelid had they been told it was Yiddish. This decision rests on the dark significance of the language riots that precipitated as a result of the 1952 law which declared Urdu as the sole national language despite the fact that Bengali speaking population far outnumbered Urdu speaking population. Moreover, Asma wanted to draw attention to the fact that this apology will remain utterly meaningless to an ordinary Bengali unless this matter was brought up on an official level and we truly shed this false sense of superiority to understand our history more deeply than a simplistic case of blacks and whites. The text of the apology as translated in the catalogue is as follows: ‘Allow me my apology, my friends. My dear Bengali brothers and sisters, I have heard that our leaders, in the land of five rivers, dealt you a cruel hand. Made you there, while us here. The sympathisers threatened with broken limbs. You would not find this story in our history books. But somewhere among yellowing white papers is sitting hidden from all eyes… a truth. That someday might reach your eyes and ears as an apology. An apology that shapes on the lips of our poets, in the brushes of my painters, in the words of my writers and the sentiments of common men. Forgive them, give them their apology. For the last forty years, we are suffering the legacy of culprit king whose namesakes still live and rule this cursed land. Forgive us…accept our apology’.
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REPORT
Walled City I Sana Zulfiqar | Fourth Year Architecture
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acing Delhi and as old as Akbar’s reign of Lahore itself (1584-98) ,the DELHI GATE, today, stands as one of the two most visibly surviving gates. It still whispers of its past glory to the passersby and to anyone who would stop, look and listen. It speaks of Moghal royalty, aristocracy, history, invasions, wars, plunders, fires, the Sikhs, efforts at rebuilding, trade and the British Raj itself. The gate leads to the ancient Delhi bazaar, the mosque and baths of Wazir Khan, various aristocratic havelis from the Moghal era and to the Fort. The passageway is thus named the ‘shahi guzargah’: the route undertaken by the kings and the royals to reach the Fort. In the 18th and 19th century, the Sikhs also used this very gate to enter, plunder and conquer Lahore, twice. The British rebuilt the gate as they found it in ruins upon gaining control of the city. Once the railway station was built near the gate, it started regaining its lost glory; the bazaar regained its colours and customers. For security and control, however, the British built the kotwali opposite the gate, keeping an eye on both the newly built station and the bazaar itself. Thus, the gate that we see today is a mix of lingering Moghal and colonial grandeur and architecture, suppressed by time, people and trade.
people; the way they treated the ‘heritage’ and the way they chose to live was unsettling. The moment one enters the ancient Delhi gate, one starts to feel small. Yes, The sight of the Shahi hemam and the colourful minarets of the Wazir Khan mosque; the nostalgia created by the Moghal buildings and jharokas; the sound of Indian music played at full blast mixed with that of the playing children, the vendors, the women and the beggars; the over powering smell of brown tobacco, yellow marigolds and multi-coloured spices mixed with the smell of sweat in the heat of July; and the stares of the burqa clad women and the paan chewing men, do make a stranger feel insignificant and intrusive.a The Shahi guzargah is a significant street, which laid the course for the royal processions of the kings, honoured officials and members of the royal families on arrival from the capital, Delhi. This trail, commencing from the Delhi gate, named after its direction, facing Delhi, penetrates through the walled city and culminates at Masti gate, channelling the trail to the Royal Lahore Fort.
Maryam Muslehuddin
Working at the office of the Sustainable Development of the Walled City Lahore Project, we had the opportunity to enter all sorts of homes in various areas of the Shahi guzargaah for the purpose of documentation. As we began, we started discovering the old city, its architecture and residents even more comprehensively. Our romanticism for the old Lahore was replaced by an image of the harsh socio-economic conditions and the archaic, almost wayward mindset of the yet very convivial and hospitable
The Lahore Fort highlighted the dwelling zone for the local governors, appointed by the king who was stationed at Delhi. At the time, River Ravi was flowing on the North-western side of Lahore, almost touching the periphery of the Lahore Fort. This trail was not a route enjoyed by royalty alone; in fact it was a flourishing centre for commerce and other social activities. With a growing community and its increasing demands, the areas adjacent to the royal trail also began developing as commercial hubs now known as Akbari Mandi, Azam Cloth Market, and the shoe market in Moti Bazar, the biggest of their nature in the country.
IMPORT
Annie Kilde Bajwa Zara Asghar | Fourth Year Fine Arts
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his summer The Occasional Shopper team got a chance to meet someone who has recently completed an eight month course at European Film College (EFC) and is presently employed there as a College Assistant. Annie Kilde Bajwa originally acquired an AP degree in Hospitality and Tourism Management. However, afterwards she wanted to pursue something she felt passionately about and this is when EFC ‘rang a bell’. Firstly, we inquire about the requirements for applying to the college. Annie notifies us that the school aims to have an equal number of boys and girls while also stressing on cultural diversity. Most importantly however, she explains that the school simply looks for students who are curious and enthusiastic about film making. Located in Ebeltoft, on the picturesque east coast of Jutland, Denmark, EFC is affiliated with the MET Film School in London. The eight month course gives the newcomers a chance to try themselves out in various areas of filmmaking such as directing, acting, editing, script writing, production management (which is a compulsory subject) and others. The students get to make at least one short film every three weeks and are visited by guest lecturers some of which include important personalities such as Jan Harlan, the executive producer for most of Stanley Quebeck movies including The Shining, and the former Head of Warner Brothers Business Affairs, Rick Senat. Annie also informed us that after the lectures the students even got to have discussions with the lecturers and exchange e-mail addresses with them for further networking. ‘I can’t stress enough (on) how important it is in the film world to have a good network,’ she emphasizes. Annie goes on to recount the movie nights during which, three times a week, they would watch movies that were usually relevant to the upcoming projects or lectures. Other times they would have movie marathons where back-to-back screenings of humorous mainstream films took place1. During her time at EFC, Annie developed an interest in script writing: ‘…it’s exciting because you’re basically the creator, you can change everything. As our script writing teacher used to say, “You’re god, you decide”.’
This resulted in a few remarkable short films including Socially Awkward Anonymous 2 which was even screened at the Herning International Short Film Festival in Denmark. This film was part of an eight and a half minute project, the idea for which came about while once casually discussing with a friend how people were awkward with each other at the start of college. For the film, the pair decided to make a group along the lines of Alcoholics Anonymous where people could talk about their awkward behavior. They settled on a ‘mockumentary’ format hence, combining humor with improvised acting. ‘We wanted to experiment with the whole improv. concept and it worked partially because we had an idea that anyone could relate to. We spent time casting the perfect actors who were all students. Then, we thought how could we get the acting to be as realistic as possible and we came up with a character profile and just gave it to the actors so they could do whatever they wanted with the characters.’ ‘So who are some of the film makers that have inspired you?’ ‘Well I have a love for comedies. And it would be very exciting to be on a set of Judd Apatow movies.’ Woody Allen is another filmmaker she admires. And apart from his movies, she lists Little Miss Sunshine, Juno and Away We Go as some of her favorites. ‘And how would you describe the film ‘scene’ where you live?’ ‘They (Films) are filled with social realism which is fine but there isn’t really a variety. To me they appear the same.’ However, she admits Danish film makers have come up with some amazing films which have been internationally recognized including In a Better World directed by Susanne Bier which won a Golden Globe for the Best Foreign Language Film in 2011. Another creative filmmaker is Lars Von Trier whose first feature The Element of Crime drew international attention. In fact, Von Trier and another Danish director, Thomas Vinterberg kick started Dogme 95, an avant grade filmmaking movement that places value in traditional elements like plot and acting as opposed to technology. Lastly, we leave Annie to address the readers as she pleases: ‘You got to work really hard to get noticed in the film industry and it’s going to be a struggle and you’re going to be broke as hell most of the times, but who cares, you’ll be doing what you love’. 1) For more information about EFC visit: http://www.europeanfilmcollege.com/ 2) Socially Awkward Anonymous may be viewed at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=663SEH1-dhk
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FEATURED STUDENT
Khadija Shafqat Madyha Leghari | Third Year Fine Arts
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hadija Shafqat is a student of fourth year from the department of Ceramic design. One could argue against the accuracy of this introduction because she is involved in many ventures apart from ceramic design. In fact, Khadija was quick to inform The Occasional Shopper team that based on her portfolio she was originally advised to go for a degree in Textile Design. However, she chose the former because she believed she already held a measure of knowledge and skill with textile so she needed instruction in ceramic design. Her work kick started in second year when students are traditionally sorted into their respective departments. At that time an artist was in residency with the Ceramic Design department at the National College of Arts; Salima Hussein carved semi solid clay like one would carve a rock and create sculptural pieces reminiscent of flat optical illusions. Khadija took influence from her technique and has similarly carved since then. Placing particular emphasis on the processes involved, Khadija informed us that the making of a piece is lengthy and trying. One starts off with a mound of wet clay that has to become leather hard for it to be suitable to carve. Carving, itself, is tricky business which involves distribution of weight in such a way that the sculpture does not collapse. What follows is a period of time in which the clay is supposed to dry slowly after which the piece is finally fired. Firing may also be done in stages at different temperatures depending on the outcome of the first fire. Interestingly, it may be noted that perfect results are not guaranteed during any of these stages because complex and sometimes uncontrollable factors affect these processes in unpredictable ways. ‘I lost two of my best pieces… while one was drying, it had a little bit of air in it so it cracked and then there was another one that I really liked; while it was in the kiln, it was so delicate ke wo toot gaya’, Khadija laments. ‘At NCA, Ceramics is included in the Design department. Do you see yourself practicing it as that or as more of an art
form? Do you agree with the ‘design’ label or the’ art’ label, if you see a need for such a label at all?’ ‘I think ceramics is design orientated but in our college, the kind of instruction that we are getting, it’s more of an art form,’ Khadija considers. She explains how most ceramists practicing in NCA have a definitive decorative element to their work, which is eventually supposed to be utilitarian. She also admits that she is now having difficulty designing work that can be mass produced and is utilitarian because she hasn’t been trained for it. However, she thinks upcoming batches are being given the required coaching because of revised syllabi. Moreover, she believes that ceramic design involves sound technical expertise in sciences like chemistry. At NCA, however, the predominant practice is a series of tests and trials which may or may not produce results. ‘Did the absence of coaching with underlying utilitarian principles make the work more meaningful to you personally?’ In response, Khadija is grateful for the opportunity to be able to express freely but believes that it is difficult to gel personal expression and mass production together in a successful work. Identifying recurring themes in her work, Khadija admits to a fascination with surface texture which has led her to closely examine reptilian scales and colours. Apart from ceramic design, Khadija is involved in a number of enterprises including hand painted clothes, shoes and customized handbags which she exhibits yearly. Explaining the thought behind these efforts, Khadija tells us that she wanted her creations to have a touch of the creator, thereby highlighting the created aspect. However, she maintains that despite being worked on by hand, her designs are affordable because she doesn’t want to limit herself to an elite market.
FEATURED STUDENT
Sarah Hashmi Madyha Leghari | Third Year Fine Arts
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arah Hashmi, a student of fourth year Fine Arts, primarily identifies grotesque vocabulary in her work. The grotesque in visual arts has typically provided means to explore alternative modes of experience and reality, while challenging classical ideas about beauty that were earlier presumed to be universal. In an interview with The Occasional Shopper, Sarah traces her interest in the subject while shedding light on how it holds personal relevance for her. ‘It started completely unconsciously in the beginning’, she admits. She recalls that at the beginning of third-year in college, she was sick with chicken pox, a disease that typically leaves visible marks on the body of the patient. She was grappling with the pressure of coming up with an original ‘concept’ and as a way to deal with it, she simply painted a portrait of herself in all its information without attempting to beautify the image in any way. The result was a somewhat disturbing image of her with visible signs of disease. This started her off on a series of images of a similar nature. Not only did she scour for subjects whose physical appearances were distorted, but in an attempt to go beyond surface exploration, she also sculpted her own hybrid creatures in soft material. These creatures had organic forms and were violently stitched. So while they looked painful and uninviting, the soft material compelled the viewer to touch. Hence, they engaged the viewer in a conflict between fascination and repulsion; and between pity and distaste. Eventually, however, Sarah saw the need to define personal relevance and find reason in her automatic tendency to lean towards the grotesque. She started examining past experiences and childhood memories in an attempt to put a finger on such imagery directly experienced by her. A standout incident was that of her grandfather’s funeral when she was eight.
‘It was a very strange experience for me’, she confides. Apart from the confusion naturally felt by a child her age, she was also very affected by the ritualistic mourning of the women from the village. ‘They just sat in a line and wailed’, she recalls. This surreal setting in which she was supposed to deal with a serious fact like death had a lasting impact on her and years later, she still remembers those women as somehow unreal and non-human. In her subsequent work, she decided to deal with this one isolated incident thereby establishing the link between her self and the themes upon which her previous work was based. Additionally, she was experimenting with technique and braved an eight feet by four feet sheet of lasani wood. She layered it multiple times with size, gesso, emulsion and washes of paint, respectively before covering the entire surface with black oil paint. As she drew on top with a sharp tool, she began scratching the surface to reveal the layers underneath. ‘I was sort of undoing what I had already done,’ she explains. It was an attempt to rediscover whatever she already held in her knowledge due to prior experience- an act very much symbolically related to her attempt to delve into the past to look for encounters that explain why she is attracted to the grotesque. She drew an image of a lone woman, centrally placed and bent slightly. Later however, she added two panels on either side that provided physical context to the figure. This was necessary because she wanted sound relation to the one event she was describing whereas a lone woman seemed like a very laden symbol to use because of feminist tradition in art. As a result of this triptych, she felt that her work had become way too much of a personal narrative and Sarah is now exploring ways in which it becomes relatable to a wider audience without losing significance for her. ‘Typically, grotesque images cast the subject in the light of the other as opposed to the self. Do you think your work makes divisional statements like that?’ Sarah answers in the negative. ‘I don’t do it because I find them to be very disgusting…I find them to be appealing somehow. In a visual sense’, she explains. ‘Funny thing is that when I look at these people, I don’t know; I somehow relate them to myself’, she further adds. She also admits that she finds the practice of exploring the grotesque very exhaustive and emotionally intensive. Therefore, she is trying to distance herself from this idea to explore other possibilities at the moment.
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FEATURED GRADUATE
Atia Quadri Muhammad Ahmad Khan | Fourth Year Architecture
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e all desire to achieve more, to achieve what others already haven’t. In our bid to do so, we often need to go beyond our usual realm of affairs. Our new section, ‘Featured Graduate’, looks at NCA graduates who have looked outwards and faced testing experiences in pursuit of their fields, and who can impart these pearls of wisdom for those who wish to follow suit.
convinced my boss (to) put me on a project’. She laughs about how they were initially hesitant to keep a girl in the animation team, ‘But once I proved that I wouldn’t start crying every time they critiqued my work, it went pretty good’.
For our first such feature, we took the chance to meet up with Atia Quadri, a graduate of NCA from the Communication Design department (2002), living in New York City. Having worked for a few years in the local market in Karachi, her home town, she made her way into New York’s renowned Pratt Institute for an MFA in Animation. Having graduated from the institute recently in October, 2010, she has now secured a position as an Instructor of Animation at Bowling Green State University, Ohio, USA.
For the next 5 years, she worked on and off, also working with another animation house called The Carrot Company, keeping in mind her desire for a master’s degree at the same time. However, she doesn’t regret working for so long:
After meeting up in Manhattan’s busy Herald Square, she guided us confidently, yet very casually, through the streets gridded in between this concrete jungle to a quieter park so we could sit down for a talk. She’s glad to meet a current student from NCA and we update her about news, events and changes back in college to break the ice. She comes off as co-operative and friendly, contrary to her claim of being a hard-liner of sorts, so it becomes easy for us to extract as much as we can from her experiences since graduation. We start with inquiring about where her interest in Animation developed. She lays it on an internship she did with Saatchi & Saatchi and realizing what she didn’t want to do – advertising. Going on to complete her undergraduate degree with a thesis related to animation, she researched her way into landing her first job at Post Amazers. She points out that in NCA at the time, there was very little 3D animation being taught which became a hurdle: ‘I was one of the few people who was very technically (design) savvy and that actually doesn’t help you at all when you move into animations because the programs and softwares are entirely different’. Yet, she goes on to say that despite initially being hired as a 2d artist, she showed a strong interest in 3D animation and was subsequently trained in MAYA by her job, ‘By my eighth month one of my co-workers, who was also an NCA person, had
‘Going straight from your undergrad to your masters program, it’s a little bit of (a) waste of time’. Without relief, she immediately follows that up by also saying: ‘The minute you graduate from school you will walk into an office and suddenly be the stupidest person there’. However, she deems that a good thing, as she goes on to explain more about the benefits of the office environment: ‘It gives you a different perspective and it gives you a lot more confidence and it gives you an idea of what your own theme of life is… if I’m going to spend a lot of money to get an MFA, I’d better be damn sure because this going to be a very major part of my life… coming straight out of your undergrad. you’re still carrying around work that your teachers said, you’re still listening to your parents and that’s a good thing but as an adult you have to find your own way and having a masters degree is your own way of, sort of like, proving that you are doing your own thing’. When she finally applied for her Masters, she decided not to take the Fullbright Scholarship since she wasn’t in favor of returning to Pakistan in two years. ‘If I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it to make a career.’ Unfortunately for her, all other scholarships and financial aid packages offered by the Pratt Institute itself, started the year after she joined. Yet, with a stroke of luck along with working on campus, she managed to cover all her expenses including tuition fees and living expenses. With a student visa, she wasn’t allowed to work off campus; she could intern but that too with a special permit. So instead, she took on campus jobs which actually led her to having more time to study, ‘If you take later hours, like 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. or 1 a.m. in the morning, then nobody really
FEATURED GRADUATE bothers you, so you can just sit on your computer and work, which is kind of what I wanted to do. Essentially, it was like getting paid for doing homework …and it helps to get to know more people which is also nice’. What also helped in her admission was how she had kept documenting her work throughout college and continued to do so even afterwards. Also, her constant involvement in activities besides academics helped: ‘It really helped that I was in societies and that I wrote stuff; I was in competitions; I won awards. Those type of things help because it just means you’re in touch with the universe. They don’t like people who live in their own little world… it just means that you’re educated and that you’re literate and you’re willing to discuss things’. It also helped that she was willing to be less uptight and offended by how people treated and talked to her for being from Pakistan, since as she says, Pakistanis don’t have the best reputation. Recalling how at instances she had to dodge some ignorant questions by being humorous about them, she emphasizes on how it’s important to not get offended by what people think or say. However, once their guard goes down, it’s easier to give them a dose of reality. Since graduating from Pratt, she’s been working through a student visa (F-1) program called Optional Practical Training, ‘…which means you get to work as a freelancer, or whatever position you want, or (even) an entire job. You just live in the city and you do what you want, (or) travel or move out of here and then get a job. And my year is actually ending in August but as a Digital Arts major, and Animation, we get a seventeen month extension which is just because we count as a computer science major’.
We discuss how having a citizenship or even a green card would have facilitated her work options because with an H1 work visa companies have to ponder over whether or not to go through the process of sponsoring your work visa as well, which is currently the case with Atia. In some cases, where the duration of work is small, it goes against you. However, having been luckily accepted, she cares to laugh about how she doesn’t have to pay anything for her visa because it will be entirely covered by her employer. She admits that being a Pakistani, a Muslim and a female helped in getting this job: ‘It means that you’re doing something which everyone perceived as extremely outside of your culture and it’s a good thing and it helps’. Reflecting over the past, she seemed happy about somehow managing to do what she wanted.
Just recently, since she got a full-time teaching job and is now getting an actual work visa: ‘As a student the best way to switch visas is to become a full time employee somewhere and if you freelance long enough at a company, in like New York, they might hire you but the economy is not really good right now so it’s kind of getting rough but because I’ve had work experience I had that opportunity where I qualified for a lot of teaching positions as well.’ On some of her professors’ advice, she applied to random universities and landed at her current teaching position.
‘When I was seventeen and I happened to mention that I wanted to do animation to people, I got laughed (at), like I got laughed out of town kind of (a) thing. It was like, everyone was just like, ha-ha-ha what are you going to do? Who is going to hire you? Like do you think Disney will ever come to Pakistan? You know the typical, and I was like, yeah it’s true, which is why I went and did (a degree in) Communication Design in NCA but I found that if you really want to do something then you do it!’ We ended the formal discussion at that, but talked a while longer about stories from back in Lahore. I guess wherever we go we’ll all enjoy looking back, but as long as we’re still in college, Atia and so many others give us the opportunity to look into so many options for the future. We wish her the best of luck for all future endeavors.
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SUBMISSIONS
Anum Lasharie Third Year Fine Arts
Disorder in Order, Digital Photographic Print
A visual holds a surreal kind of a power; it is something that can stir up feelings in a person. The power to invoke those feeling in the viewer through my work is what’s most important to me. My work has always been very personal because I believe that only if an idea holds some importance for the artist can it then be translated into a strong visual.
Disorder in Order, Digital Photographic Print
Recently, my work has taken a broader turn. I have started to focus on human behavior and on the continuous restlessness of the mind and body. My photographs try to capture the same feeling of constant nudging and of constant unease. That agitation of the human mind is what i have tried to capture in my recent work.
SUBMISSIONS
Hashim Ali Choudhary Third Year Communication Design
All work and no play makes jack a dull boy, Photo Manipulation
Muhammad Haroon Akram Third Year Architecture
Diagnose, Mixed Media
Theiving Birds, Ink on Paper
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REPORT
Al Hamra Open Residency Areeba Maqsood & Zoya Gul Hasan | First Year Foundation Course
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xhibiting a work of art requires a certain kind of bravado and a great deal of generosity in the sense that when one puts a painting up on a wall, naked under public’s eyes, it is like inviting anyone and everyone to probe into one’s mind. This munificence or the baring of one’s soul, is what Gary Holland once aptly phrased as, ‘It is not our art, but our heart that is on display.’ After working for a month at the Al-hamra Art Gallery Studio, five students from the National College of Arts exhibited their works. The budding artists included Anum Lasharie, Haider Ali, Julius John, Uzair Amjad and Zahrah Ehsan. Using graphite on paper, Haider Ali creates a series of three drawings depicting creatures, in what is thought to be sophisticated attire. What shocks one immediately is that the human head III, Graphite on Paper, Haider Ali has been replaced with the head of an insect. The artist’s main purpose was to comment on the repulsive elitist attitude of the people at the top of the hierarchical ladder - how they shed their old skins, leave behind what used to be and adopt an entirely new approach towards people who belong to the very same social class from which they arose. He weaves into his drawings the paradoxical theme of ordered chaos and how it may be precipitated through a set of logical steps, initiated by the slightest change, a phenomenon often called ‘The Butterfly Effect’. Zahrah Ehsan’s work, three mixed media paintings, are like an extension of her subconscious where the constant war between different realities is being waged and the fine line between dreams and reality lies in a blur. Creating a Skeletons III, Ink on Paper, Julius John
‘dream within a dream’, in Zahrah’s words, and protecting it from obliteration, is what lies at the core and out of it emerges an irony where one is aware of the created bubble but believes in it as vehemently. Using digital print and mixed media, Uzair Amjad creates featureless faces that depict the loss of our identities, especially after the 9/11 incident due to which we have pushed ourselves into a web of questions, and while trying to answer them, have lost our selves. Forging ‘immediate identities’ during this journey, he believes, it has essentially reduced us to pick from a set of stereotypes that range from the ‘freedom of speech type’ that are at the forefront of the rampant blame game, to the ‘license to kill type’ that believe in painting the town red, albeit without much joyous intent. Julius John tries to encompass death in his work. In The Last Supper, painted using acrylics, he depicts how fragile human life is. In his other works, done with ink on paper, he paints the landscape of the locality where he has resided his whole life. Recently, it was partially torn down to build a new road and people continue to inhabit these half demolished quarters, open to the eyes of any passersby from the fallen walls. Julius A Dream Within A Dream, describes this event as an ‘earthquake’, which Mixed Media, Zahrah Ehsan again is reminiscent of the precarious existence of stability. Disorder in Order is a series of photographic prints by Anum Lasharie. Her work emits vibes of restlessness as she focuses on human behaviour and how a person is always in a state of agitation. Particularly, Anum looks for visual manifestations of this mental unease in the human body. However, remarkably in Anum’s images, the body is not often physically present for the viewer to be aware of its underlined existence. The Open Studio Al-hamra Residency was an altogether different experience for the students. Being together for a month made them work as a team even though each one of them had their own work to do. They provided support and encouragement for each other and the experience inculcated in them, a will, to do better. The exhibition that began on the 6 th of September was well received. This event created quite a stir and it might take place on an annual basis in order to provide a platform for scores of other upcoming artists.
LITERATURE
Titbits of Bliss
Against the gods
Zoona Jerral | Third Year Architecture
Sania Azhar | Third Year Textile Design
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he inherent behaviour of most mortal beings is that of sieving the best out of life. Why is it then that in such a routine of evolution, you will still find a people bound with utmost devotion to lifestyles as primitive as man himself? Travelling down the Pirs, you often get a chance to trespass the occlusion built by this question. Travelling down these very Pirs, her envy poured in through a slim puncture in the windshield; stemming from a vivid image of a nomad girl, amidst her flocks and some other titbits of bliss. A few months earlier the girl’s long journey had begun at the brink of the Babusar Sierra. Standing on an edge of the 10000 metre high margin, she took a last glance at the amaranthine vastness below. Her long walk in the clouds was to begin from here, and as the Himalayas swayed below, she was to see the several metres above the sea, never knowing though, how many there were to be above herself. The monsoon sated summer spurred her stallions down these heights. And when such a ride did her in, all she had to do was collapse onto the flow of saffron cascades, wait for her herds to graze their tang and get drenched in sunrays for hours without a care of what her shadows defined. Piercing the Deodars, her stroll ceaselessly paved way for the Indus. And within their alliance only the gorge paused at intervals, taking just a dip in the rapids before splashing up to its crest. The wandering ended at the crease of the Pir Panjals. When her envy poured in through a slim puncture in the Chirs. Stemming from a vivid image of a girl driving down the Pirs, within her willy and some other titbits of bliss.
There is no fine line Muhammad Ahmad Khan | Fourth Year Architecture
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t’s cold. It’s very cold and I like it. A while back, I was sitting on one of the center seats talking away or listening to music, quite what I’ve done throughout most of the journey. We’ve just passed through Balakot and I’ve decided to stick my head out of the window. As the cold starts biting my face, my nausea for the most part escapes my mind and as the coach climbs uphill, the valley begins to stretch out below. The sun has already hidden itself behind...well, one of these mountains. The ridges tower themselves up as if waiting for the forthcoming stars to greet them into the night sky, just so that they can fade away into the dark, and let them take over the show. However, till then there is a fantastical display. As the road winds itself around and runs across the steep slopes,
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ntering into a world of great agony, where everything is lamentable, where everything is uncertain and ambivalent. Entering into a world which is a great battlefield, where a fierce competition is going on, where each one of us is fighting...fighting and striving for almost everything... yet for nothing. Entering into a world where only choices make and destroy us. For all its apparent order, the world is uncertain especially the further into future one tries to peer...the day of doom has arrived; man has to make yet another choice: with the gods or against the gods? Because we can’t have it all, we must decide what we will have and what we must go for. The economic analysis begins with the human mind which is always busy in a brown study. It assumes that human behaviour reflects ‘rational self-interests’. It allows individuals to make choices and pursue opportunities to increase their utility. It is quotient that changes one’s choices and decisions. This quotient points out whether an individual should or should not upsize his meal. Now, the challenge is to make the economic phenomena intelligible by basing it on individual purposes and plans. However, the bigger challenge is to trace out the unintended consequences of the individual choices. The process begins with choices, pondering over the pros and cons, deciding and eventually ending up with the ‘Uncertainty’. It is you who choose and decide the sort of uncertainty you want to end up with. So why to have qualms? Let yourself go, allow your heart to guide you like a lantern in the dark. Don’t choose between good and bad but only between shades of grey.
nature’s stage show curtains have just been raised. First, when you’re still down below, or when you’ve just crossed a low lying bridge you hear the stream fighting its way over rocks and bends, and you notice it running long until it vanishes into a corner. Even though it’s all just water there is no simplicity or serenity here; the form, the intensity and the drama it upholds are all innumerably complex. At certain places, it establishes its authority and cuts right through; at others, it struggles against large rocks and boulders, smack in the center of its path, as they hold on strong against its vicious wrath. Then, as you raise your gaze up, your eyes jump from dot to dot, covering the rooftops of the many houses scattered about the hillside opposite you. You follow the lines made by the folds turning in and around. You feel the might of mega tons of rock imposing its presence. Your very own motion and movement is so much defined and dictated by these mountains that free movement is alien here. You feel a slave to the constant twists and turns. Here, where distances are not measured in kilometers or miles as much as in minutes and hours. Here, where at night it’s hard to notice where the light spotted mountainside ends and the starry sky starts.
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ARCHIVES
Colonial India Two men dressed in English attire pose next to a signpost directing travellers to Gujranwala, Rawalpindi, Multan and somewhat comically, London.
Back of a postcard sent by a British citizen from Lahore, recording his impressions of the city: 4 April 1941 Left Karachi at 8.20 and travelled comfortably in air-conditioned train to Lahore. Ripe cornfields, woods. flat country. air. Lahore’ 6 p.m. Very tired but not too dirty (.) Went Cinema to see The Great Dictator. Wide roads, trees, grass, flowers, particularly roses everywhere. Faletti’s Hotel, cool, shut up, trees, comfortable. Gardens with flowers + birds. Visited Museum with its Kipling association. Drove round fort with fat Fakri Mohammed’s taxi. Rested p.m. After tea drove by Canal to Shalimar Garden. Were reminded of Versailles, Durbar and Kashmir. Lovely trees and grass, roses, hoopoes, mango trees, fountains, pavilions.