Important Notice

Inspired by the city of Lahore, where he was born and raised, Rashid Rana employs his composite photo-collages to interrogate the ironies and juxtapositions spawned by urbanization, globalization, and the heavy cross-border flows of people, products and ideas that they result in. Portraying progress and development as bittersweet, the artist draws on the miniature painting traditions of South Asia to grapple with contemporary social disparities... Inspired by the city of Lahore, where he was born and raised, Rashid Rana employs his composite photo-collages to interrogate the ironies and juxtapositions spawned by urbanization, globalization, and the heavy cross-border flows of people, products and ideas that they result in. Portraying progress and development as bittersweet, the artist draws on the miniature painting traditions of South Asia to grapple with contemporary social disparities in his work. “There are two factors to consider in Rashid’s work, one is the production of art and the other is the reading of art. Both these points carry different expectations. Here the issues are played out both in the way that they are expressed to the viewer as well as being the core subject of this exchange” (Naiza Khan, “Reading Through the Lense of the Political: Contemporary Art in Pakistan”, Asia Art Archive website, www.aaa.org.hk, accessed November 2009).

Built on contrasts in scale, the present lot, part of Rana’s Dis-location series of works, is a critical comment on paradox, the transformation of culture and convention, and the notion that tradition is far from static. “The series of works by Rashid Rana, entitled Dis-location, started with the fear that he could find himself in the midst of one of the numerous bomb blasts in the city of Lahore. As the works developed, they claimed a different reading. The sites of chosen buildings are post-1900 colonial developments photographed from the same angle over a 24-hour period and constructed to build the larger image of the same. This time-based piece responds to video work but evokes a nostalgic image akin to the sepia postcards of historical sites… but a new-age postcard that encapsulates the reading of an event in fractured time frames” (Ibid.).

“A sense of foreboding fills ‘Dis-Location I’, which is made up of hundreds of images of a street scene that perhaps Lahore residents would easily recognise. A closer look shows each of the little photographs to be of the same building Rana has ‘painted’ in near-billboard proportions. These are not postcard shots, however, but look more like surveillance images of the building at different times of the day (Rana had stationed a camera opposite the building and programmed the camera to continuously take pictures for a couple of days). Immediately, the innocuous building looks as though it is a target…” (Deepanjana Pal, “Emphasising Multiplicity”, Nukta Art, Volume 3, Issue 1, May 2008, Karachi).

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