Landscape of Imagination

This research undertakes an analysis of archival photographs captured with a camera known in the Urdu language as the “Soul Catcher” in relation to backdrop painting in the context of the Global South. this project rethinks the history of backdrop painting and its reception as well as the historical and artistic dimensions of the camera itself, proposing a third, convergent, space in which these practices coincide in contemporary times.

By exploring photos taken by the Soul Catcher camera, it attempts to examine the history of itinerant photography during the period of modernization following World War II in the newly independent country of Pakistan, and in particular, in the cities of Karachi and Lahore.

The research attempts to explore and re-narrate a possible history of photography and painting within the Global South, in relation to proletarian history and British art education in colonial South Asia.

I aim to learn and practice a traditional painting practice influenced by European painting as well as Persian and Moghul miniatures.

Further, exploring methodological question surrounding artistic research, I study the notion of essayistic exhibition and mural as modes of artistic practice.

The search to propose a transdisciplinary practice points to the complexity of the subject and context of inquiry, as well as how substructures perform in creating connections between seemingly irreconcilable arenas, and forms of urban life and its transnational characteristics.