As part of our commitment to promote young emerging talent from countries that lie beyond the Middle East (but which have important historical ties with the region) Lawrie Shabibi is pleased to present Stop, Play, Pause, Repeat, a group exhibition that brings together eleven young and mid-career artists from Pakistan. International interest in contemporary art from Pakistan has been growing over the last decade and in this exhibition we see a cognitive response from the artists to the persistent conflict in Pakistan, which is akin to a never-ending war that disrupts the lives of thousands each day. The artists have endeavoured to engage with the social and political rupture in an attempt to subvert the war narrative prevailing on the television news channels by using a set of nuanced criteria and ironies that are disarming rather than appalling.
In Pakistan, the conflict is insidious. The 'war' is not an overt one although its effects are. The guerrilla war raged by the Taliban, the degenerative economy and the deepening disparity between classes have created a fertile breeding ground for fear and anxiety, with no respite in view. In general, the dilapidation of the social fabric of the nation is evident in all aspects of life.
This multi-media exhibition will feature works by Abdulla M I Syed, Adeel uz Zafar, Ahsan Jamal, Irfan Hasan, Mahreen Zuberi, Muhammad Ali (in collaboration with Cyra Ali), Saba Khan, Salman Toor, Sara Khan and Seher Naveed. The eleven artists have sought the means to look beyond visceral and employ the use of irony, very much in keeping with the milieu - Jonathan Keats the conceptual artist and experimental philosopher says, "Irony is art's shibboleth". The works produced are heavily nuanced rather than immediate and as the title suggests, ubiquitous rather than didactic or edifying. The title infers playfulness, but that arises from the deliberate attempt on the part of the artists to deflect the attention of the viewer from the propinquity of the chaos. In fact, many of the works exude levity, which adds to the poignancy of the narrative rather than diminishes it.
The themes that have emerged in the artists' explorations of the anarchic situation in Pakistan include such diverse elements as nostalgia, fragmentation, altered perceptions, intolerance of the 'other' and the loss of innocence.
Stop Play, Pause, Repeat is in collaboration with ArtNow, Pakistan's only online magazine for contemporary art.
