Sweeping Back the Sea
Aicon Gallery
New York, 2017
Real Estate Dreams, Oil on Jute, 12 x 30 inches
Meet the Neighbours, Oil on Canvas, 8 x 60 inches
A New Aispiration, Oil on Canvas,
25 x 45 inches
Meet the Neighbours, Oil on Canvas, (close-up)
Meet the Neighbours, Oil on Canvas (close-up)
Meet the Neighbours, Oil on Canvas (close-up)
It is not uncommon in Karachi for your neighbors to be strangers and for the streets which you pass
every day to be unknown territory. This city changes every day and what I call ‘home’ is now a bizarre
paradox of predictablly uncomfortable environments, pulled together through cement, iron bars, mercury glass, coated with candy floss hues of wall paint. Since 1992, I’ve lived in one of the oldest
residential areas in Karachi and beneath the sickly-sweet choice of palette for the burgeoning rise of apartments and broken
footpaths lies a neighbourhood of undulating stories. This series of work is a reflection of disruptions in residential areas and what the ideal home is today for a
middle class Karachi citizen. As property passes through new hands and roads are scrapped away every
week, the rarity of stability in the physical environment has launched a tussle for shelter, propelling a
race to reach the sky and plummet through the center of the earth.
“Sweeping Back the Sea’ was an exhibition curated by Adeela Suleman at Aicon Gallery, New York. It looks at how a new generation of Pakistani artists continues to address the ongoing sociopolitical conflicts facing the nation, while having moved almost completely beyond the neo-miniaturist visual modes of the past two decades.”