DOHA, Qatar, Nov. 6, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Qatar Museums opened a first-of-its-kind exhibition exploring arts and architecture from Pakistan since the 1940s.
Farida Batool, Nai Reesan Shehr Lahore Diyan (2006), Lenticular Print, 81 x 162 cm, Naazish Ata-Ullah Collection, Courtesy of the Artist.
The Amir His Highness Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Her Excellency Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Chairperson of Qatar Museums, His Excellency Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif, and Prime Minister of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, inaugurated the exhibition, alongside Catherine Grenier, Director of Concept of the Art Mill Museum and the curatorial team.
Organised by the future Art Mill Museum and presented in collaboration with the National Museum of Qatar, MANZAR presents the diverse output of the artists, architects, and others who have defined the narratives, histories, and contemporary perspectives of Pakistan's cultures over the past eighty years.
Through twelve themed galleries, the exhibition includes unprecedented loans from public Pakistani institutions such as the Alhamra Art Museum in Lahore and Pakistan National Council of the Arts in Islamabad; loans from private collections across Pakistan and in Dubai, London and New York; and works from Qatar Museums collections.
MANZAR is an Urdu and Arabic word meaning scene, view, landscape, or perspective. The exhibition begins with artists such as Abdur Rahman Chughtai and Zainul Abedin, who worked during the British Raj, and continued their practices in what became West and East Pakistan. The Partition of 1947 was-and still is-a major subject for artists such as Anna Molka Ahmed, Zarina and Bani Abidi. Organised loosely chronologically, the exhibition moves into aesthetic experiments by artists including Shakir Ali, Zubeida Agha, Murtaja Baseer and Sadequain, who developed highly personal modes of expression in urban centres including Karachi, Lahore, Dhaka and the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad.
Special attention is given to architects who transformed the country's landscape and articulated the ambitions of its institutions through major building projects. The first phase of development involved the expertise of many modern Western architects, such as the French Michel Ecochard, who built the first university in Karachi; Konstantínos Doxi