Arts & Crafts

Art in Pakistan continues to inspire and produce more new and aspiring artists, despite the country facing tough times. The main centres of new art in Pakistan are its two largest cities, Karachi and Lahore. Karachi, on the Arabian Sea, is the country’s financial and media capital, brash and cosmopolitan (and violent). Across the country, [...]

Pakistani modern art market is soaring, thanks to recent boom in economic activity, rising incomes, investor interest and a line-up of upcoming artists – plus increasing corporate and Arab patronage. Pakistan’s art market has gone crazy over the past year, with prices multiplying 10 to 20 times over. And famous artists are not the only [...]

Chairman of Orascom Hotels Samih Swairis was so enthralled by the beautiful colours of the minibuses plying on the Karachi city roads that he requested to arrange few for his resort in Elgouna Island picnic resort near Cairo city. The deco body formation of these buses started in July 2007 and completed on November 7, [...]

Nigar Nazar speaks of her creation with obvious affection. “Gogi is a Pakistani woman who wears polka dots ? because I love them.” Though internationally recognized and honoured as Pakistan’s first female cartoonist, Nazar modestly confesses, “I doodled long before I became an artist.” She approached the principal of the Arts Council of Pakistan in [...]

New York-based artist Shahzia Sikander has achieved international acclaim for her diverse body of works, which range from miniature-size paintings to room-size installations … In the mid-1990s, her early works prompted curators and critics everywhere to align Sikander with many other artists whose work dealt with themes of personal and cultural identity. She was included [...]

The Moguls’ embellishment of the Lahori Khussa made it into a trend for the ordinary as well as the privileged and the Khussa of Heera Mandi became an important part of the subcontinent’s culture. Lahore’s traditional embroidered shoe, the Khussa, is a specialty of Heera Mandi – a bazaar of great historical and cultural significance. [...]

A team of W-11 vehicle decorators from Karachi will undertake a residency in Melbourne to transform a tram that will run a free service on the Melbourne City Circle tram route during Games time. A fleet of particularly vibrant mini-buses ply the Karachi route called W-11, characterised by stainless-steel panels, brightly coloured plastic collages, flashing [...]

Artists have arrived here from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, France, Russia, Syria, Germany, UK, Turkey, Indonesia, Jordan, India, Kenya, Taiwan, besides Karachi, Lahore and Quetta. Hundreds of people, including art lovers and students, visited the open day of the VASL International Artists’ Workshop 2006 on Saturday at Gadani rest house, where 24 participating artists from Pakistan [...]

The colour black plays an important role in Zen philosophy, since it is symbolic of both ‘nothingness’ and ‘everything’, making up an integral part of the majority of East Asian art. Tadayoshi Nakabayashi, the most eminent of Japanese printmakers, is renowned for creating movement through tonal variations of black. The large woodcuts of Chinese printmaker [...]

With the help of the Canadian High Commission in Islamabad, the KaraFilm Society and a major national newspaper, Mehta’s film Water, the last of the trilogy that started with Fire and Earth, was shown at a private screening at the city’s new Arts Council auditorium. Diplomatic victories between India and Pakistan are few and far [...]