Eqbal Mehdi’s Charcoal Drawings
01/23/2010 · Mansi Shah
“It all started at the age of eight when he drew a picture on a wall with a piece of charcoal, stolen from his mother’s stove.”
Abdul Ghani Khan – Pashto Artist/Poet
11/28/2009 · Mansi Shah
Translation of When Man Sits Down In Dust:
Manhood stands tall and high, and becomes madness;
The self takes leave of being and becomes ecstasy.
When iron sated with blood embraces love,
It turns into a bewildered sitar string.
When time robs man of love and the loved one,
He sees the beloved’s glory and his own.
How man sprouts when he sits down in dust!
A manjila resting on riches becomes a serpent.
Don’t shower houris and gilman over me. Enough!
God, I swear, I’m not concerned with anyone save you;
Abdul Ghani Khan and his wife, Roshan
Where today, I walk oblivious and proud,
God knows, to this garden, who will be the heir.
I am a Pukthun and am not afraid of death;
I am angered at an empty life and a desolate end.
The river of doubt runs deep through my heart,
Wondering when the brilliant waterfall of hope will flow.
My heart gazes at your indifferent eye and so,
At times the great string breaks into tears.
Is music lament or rapture — I cannot decide;
Every tone now moves us, now becomes shrill.
Khan's sculptures
The self takes leave of being and becomes ecstasy.
When iron sated with blood embraces love,
It turns into a bewildered sitar string.
When time robs man of love and the loved one,
He sees the beloved’s glory and his own.
How man sprouts when he sits down in dust!
A manjila resting on riches becomes a serpent.
Don’t shower houris and gilman over me. Enough!
God, I swear, I’m not concerned with anyone save you;
Princess Durru Shehvar, Khan’s drawing of the Princess
Where today, I walk oblivious and proud,
God knows, to this garden, who will be the heir.
I am a Pukthun and am not afraid of death;
I am angered at an empty life and a desolate end.
The river of doubt runs deep through my heart,
Wondering when the brilliant waterfall of hope will flow.
My heart gazes at your indifferent eye and so,
At times the great string breaks into tears.
Is music lament or rapture — I cannot decide;
Every tone now moves us, now becomes shrill.
_____________________________________________
Read about Khan here/here and the Pashto language here.
Ghani Khan’s poems sung by Sardar Ali Takkar:
Haunted House in Pakistan
11/03/2009 · Grant Davis
Rashid Rana
10/12/2009 · Mansi Shah
Veil I, 2004
Veil II, 2004
Veil III, 2004
“The justification for the veil traditionally has been the protection of women from the lustful gazes of men but what is controlled is the sight of women not the vision of men. The veiled woman is one of the most common tropes of art from the Islamic world… Rana’s work adds a new and discordant note to this chorus. His close-ups of the heavily shrouded, dehumanized faceless faces are, amazingly composed of hard-core pornography downloaded from the internet. In the encounter, the images are both shocking and beautiful… And when one recognizes the pixels, one thinks of the unlikely juxtaposition first as opposites, and then, numbingly as the same. The thousands of naked women are as depersonalized as the woman behind the veil.” — Kavita Singh
Karen Mirza and Brad Butler: The Museum of Non Participation
09/20/2009 · Mansi Shah
Karen Mirza and Brad Butler conceived The Museum of Non Participation in 2007 when, during the Pakistani Lawyers movement in Islamabad, they viewed the protests and subsequent state violence from a window in The National Art Gallery.
Since then they have pursued ideas connected to their position that day – through conversation, images, activities and narratives following strands of dialogue to different people, places and contexts.
Working over an eighteen month period with street vendors, Urdu translators, architects, estate agents, housing activists, lawyers, hairdressers, filmmakers, wedding photographers, newspaper printers, artists and writers, they have played out different manifestations of The Museum of Non Participation.
The project first appeared as an English/Urdu language class in September 2008. The free class, still ongoing, invites English and Urdu speakers to exchange conversational language under the guidance and mediation of Hasan Navid. It has become a space for cultural and linguistic exchange travelling from the Oxford House community centre in Bethnal Green to an invited space behind Yaseen’s Hairdressers on the Bethnal Green Road and recently to a public performance at the Guernica room in the Whitechapel Gallery.
Hosted by artist collective VASL, Mirza and Butler returned to Karachi for a second time in December 2008, where they occupied a space at the Pakistani Arts Council; this open space became a location to work through ideas with (non) participants and a base from which they conducted interventions outside in the streets of the city. They distributed newspapers as packaging for food sold by the tandoor walla’s, presented performance interventions at Sunday Bazaar, and worked with sign writers to produce text banners and wall paintings that demarcated the Museum as a pop-up institution, announcing a new way of moving through and looking at the city: in a city with almost no museums, the city itself becomes the museum.
The scars of colonialism, partition and subsequent post colonialist ventures of improvement run deep in Karachi. Representations of Pakistan by Western media portray a rogue state suffering from conflict, extremism, natural disasters and sporadic martial law, made more fearsome by its nuclear status. The Museum of Non Participation seeks to discover the patterns and realities of everyday life and to find other languages and other voices.
The project has variously taken the form of film, an Urdu/English language exchange, street interventions, a radio show and performances. On 20 September 2009 a newspaper publication featuring some of the different voices and interpretations of the title will be distributed across the UK as a supplement of The Daily Jang – the international newspaper from Pakistan’s oldest and largest media group.
This newspaper precedes the official ‘launch’ of The Museum of Non Participation, a month-long festival which will bring together the multiple faces of the project in a programme of film screenings, talks, discussions, Urdu poetry, and performance.
The Museum of Non Participation raises questions about resistance and the choice and consequence of action vs inaction. The strictures of conflict, class and monetary divisions within a globalised world provoke engagement with the problems of participating or not participating in such a system, whether in Karachi, London or elsewhere; The Museum of Non Participation examines how our lives in one space have implications on the other.
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September 25 – October 25, 2009
Yaseen’s, 277 Bethnal Green Road, London E2 6AH
Open Tuesday – Saturday, 1 – 8PM
Sunday 1 – 6PM, Closed Mondays
Free Entry
The Electric Guitar Cont’d, from Ghalib to Guru Dutt to Vampires
06/27/2009 · Grant Davis
Phir Mujhe Deeda-e-taar Yaad Aaya from the 1954 film Mirza Ghalib.
Sunil Ganguly’s steel guitar rendition of Chaudhvin Ka Chand, from Guru Dutt’s
1960 film of the same title.
Dance scene from Khwaja Sarfraz’s 1967 vampire film Zinda Laash.
Khuda Hafiz
06/19/2009 · Grant Davis
خدا حافظ / ख़ुदा हािफ़ज़
Khuda hafiz is a common parting phrase of Persian origin used in Muslim communities throughout South Asia. It is translated as “God be your Protector”. There is much debate surrounding the use of Khuda in reference to Allah. Some view the use of khuda as improper, preferring instead to strictly refer to the Supreme Being as Allah. They instead say, Allah hafiz.
Two interesting articles discussing the controversy and usage of Khuda hafiz as well as its changing status in South Asian Muslim communities:
Khuda Hafiz versus Allah Hafiz
The Other Column: Khuda Hafiz ka Allah hee Hafiz
Yeh Jo Halka Halka Suroor Hai
06/02/2009 · Grant Davis
نصرت فتح على خان
Qawwali by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
Malik Brothers
04/24/2009 · Mansi Shah
Zeb, Shoaib and Hassan Malik photographed by Chris Luxton.
Mansur Salim
04/11/2009 · Mansi Shah
Miniature, 1985
Industrialist’s Resort
