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Inspired by the constantly expanding city of Lahore, where he was born and raised, Rashid Rana employs his composite photo-collages and multichannel video installations 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. Understanding progress and development as bittersweet, the artist tussles with contemporary social and... Inspired by the constantly expanding city of Lahore, where he was born and raised, Rashid Rana employs his composite photo-collages and multichannel video installations 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. Understanding progress and development as bittersweet, the artist tussles with contemporary social and distributional disparities, as well as the thin line separating cries for preservation from allegations of stagnation, tradition from modernity.

Rana’s photographic practice draws a lot from the miniature traditions of South Asia, particularly in its focus on minute detailing, form and colour. Built on contrasts in form, scale, colour and content, the present lot is a critical comment on the transformation of culture and the slow erosion of heritage. On first examination, the image appears to be an interior view, albeit pixilated, of the arches and tapestries adorning an imposing Mughal palace. Once viewers adjust their focus, however, they realize that the pixels composing it are actually several smaller images of the familiar signs and symbols of global commerce.

The relationship between the image and these constituent parts compels another reanalysis from viewers. “Chosen with acid wit, the smaller images generally subvert or at least complicate the larger image that they help to create” (Kavita Singh, "Between the Part and the Whole”, Rashid Rana – Identical Views, Bose Pacia, Nature Morte and Chatterjee & Lal exhibition catalogue, 2004-05, p. 22). Irreverently using the golden arches of McDonalds as building blocks for the imperial arches of Mughal architecture, Rana spotlights the way in which global brand culture has thoroughly permeated our existence, suggesting perhaps that even traditional strongholds of culture have now come to depend on its patronage for their continued existence.

"Among the new generation of Pakistani artists, Rashid Rana is the most important figure today …With its different medium and scale, his work deals with multiple issues: both the formal and conceptual. It investigates the representation of reality, two dimensionality of an image, as well as the politics of gender, violence, popular culture, and the authenticity of a work of art, in this age of global distribution” (Quddus Mirza, Rashid Rana, Manchester International Festival, 2007).

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