The Show brings together two internationally acclaimed artists: Farida Batool and Masooma Syed. The artists trace their individual experiences and art trajectories as they question the relationship between art and life, including their personal relationship with art and its influence on them. These questions became the foundation of the artists’ evolving conversation around the same ideas. The combined artist statement notes, “The milieu’s deep settled silence hovered over the conversation between the two of us while making sense of the absurdness, and un-layering the crumbling grim situation settled around us.”
Farida Batool holds a BFA (1993) from the National College of Arts, an MA (2003) from the University of New South Wales, Australia, and a Ph.D. (2015) from SOAS, University of London. As an artist, she employs a multidisciplinary approach to her work, choosing the best-suited material according to the theme and requirements of her work. She has been involved in many art projects and community workshops for raising awareness among women communities in several urban and rural areas of Pakistan as well as conducted cultural and political dialogue among different communities.
Also a graduate from the National College of Arts with a BFA (1994) and MFA (2002), Masooma Syed is a critically acclaimed artist. Syed’s personal history shapes the aesthetics and politics of her art practice, which involves intricate processes, materials, layered ideas of reality, society, fiction, and multiple narratives of human life in conflict. Her visuals are a conundrum where kitsch is celebrated, convention is flouted and slickness is derided. She is the recipient of the Commonwealth Fellowship of Art and Craft, University of New South Wales, Australia, Here and There, Art and Craft Fellowship, Manchester University, and several other international Artist Residencies.
Both artists have exhibited extensively, locally and internationally, and hold years’ worth of teaching and research experience at notable educational institutions in Pakistan and abroad.
The show remains open until Thursday, 30th March 2023, from 10 AM – 5 PM (excluding Sunday).
