Zinda-dil-a’an-e-Lahore – Billboard Project is an initiative of Lahore Biennale Foundation (LBF) in partnership with Parks and Horticulture Authority (PHA), Habib Bank Limited (HBL) and Kinetic Pakistan. Curated by Qudsia Rahim, Executive Director, LBF; artworks of 16 participating artists were displayed between 24 Nov 2020 - 4 Dec 2020. Lahore is one of Pakistan’s cultural capitals and home to the arts and literature. As a response to the prevailing Covid-19 situation, the Lahore Biennale Foundation in partnership with the Punjab Horticulture Authority invited artists to take over billboards in various parts of the City as an artists’ response, and to pay homage to the City and its Citizens - a reminder of the humanity that holds us together. Zinda-dil-a’an-e-Lahore is ... More
The Lahore Biennale Foundation has announced the appointment of Hoor Al Qasimi, President and Director of Sharjah Art Foundation, as Curator for the second edition of the Lahore Biennale (LB02). LB02 was held in Lahore, Pakistan in early 2020. It presented new commissions, large-scale installations, and discursive programming that took place at various venues in the city of Lahore. Hoor Al Qasimi, president and director of Sharjah Art Foundation, is a curator and practicing artist. In 2002, she was appointed curator of Sharjah Biennial 6 and has since continued as the Biennial Director. Al Qasimi is President of the Africa Institute, Sharjah, and President of the International Biennial Association. She serves on the Board of Directors for MoMA PS1, New ... More
Friendship of Nations looks to the revolutionary potential of crafts and folklore behind the ideological impulses of two key modern moments: the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and Poland’s Solidarność in the 1980s. Slavs and Tatars see these moments as bookends to the two major geopolitical narratives of the recent past, the communist project of the 20th and Islamic modernism in the 21st centuries. From 17th century Sarmatism, the dominant ideology amongst the Polish nobility, to monobrows in America and the Green movement in present-day Iran, Friendship of Nations traces an ambitious if unlikely genealogy between Iran and Poland. Friendship of Nations looks to the revolutionary potential of crafts and folklore behind the ideological impulses of two key modern moments: the ... More
The Youth Forum initiative of the Lahore Biennale Foundation (LBF) actively engages with younger audiences that include in-school and out-of-school children, through public and private sector schools from across Lahore. The Youth Forum is a free educational resource and community-building program that aims for inclusion beyond socio-economic boundaries. LBF works with different institutional partners. The objectives of Youth Forum are to encourage creativity and develop critical thinking skills, as students experience art beyond their screens and textbooks. Students interact with maps, architecture, and exhibition design, and develop experiential and imaginative learning.
The Performing Arts Program of the second edition of the Lahore Biennale (LB02) was a new addition to the programming where audience experienced a musical journey starting from the Northern Mountains of Pamir (Gilgit) to the southern coasts of Balochistan (Makran) - a journey that creatively recalls the mutual linkages of West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia and Africa.
Constructed by the sixth Mughal Emperor during the seventeenth century, the Summer Palace [Pari Mahal] was built as a seasonal retreat for the royal family. Located at the basement of the Shish Mahal of the Lahore Fort, the Summer Palace has massive walls, an elaborate system of water channels, and a maze-like layout. It’s a space in which interiors and exteriors blur, and where night and day seemingly meld together. This character lends itself to ... More
The Lahore Biennale Foundation (LBF) and the Goethe-Institut, in further collaboration with Vasl, Pakistan, launched an open call in May 2016, for an eight-week artist residency, seeking two Germany-based artists and/or researchers interested in cross-disciplinary theory and practice related to cities and urban phenomena. Karachi and Lahore were chosen to house the winning artists. The objective of this residency, in both cities, is to encourage and facilitate a critical exploration of the urban and its peculiarities coupled with the myriad artistic possibilities within the wider frame of each individual’s practice and research approach.
A discussion with Zoya Siddiqui and Farwa Hassan. At the first ever artSPEAK event, emerging artists Zoya Siddiqui and Farwa Hassan were invited to share their experience as the recipients of the Theertha Performance Platform Award, and to expand upon how their practice related to performance art. The talk took place at Gallery 39K on June 8, 2015. Zoya Siddiqui, a visual artist, is a recent Beaconhouse National University graduate based in Lahore. Farwa Hassan graduated from the Beaconhouse National University in 2014 and has showcased her works in Lahore and Islamabad. Zoya Siddiqui, a visual artist, is a recent Beaconhouse National University ... More
The LBF Research Fellowship - 2015 was awarded to the UAE-based writer and researcher Saira Ansari to document the archives of the pioneering modernist artist, Zubeida Agha (1922-1997). The Fellowship was developed in collaboration with Asia Art Archive based in Hong Kong, and the archive is available on the AAA platform here.
The 200 page Guidebook provides extensive information on the sites, artists, and themes of the Lahore Biennale 02: between the sun and the moon. Works exploring human entanglement with nature revisit traditional understandings of self and their cosmological underpinnings. The latter derives, in part, from astronomy, a discipline that made important strides amidst cultural and intellectual exchange between South and West Asia. For centuries, inhabitants of these regions oriented themselves with reference to the sun, the moon, the constellations. between the sun and the moon 12 How might we reflect on our place within the cosmos today, at this conjuncture ... More
The 170 page Guidebook provides extensive information on the sites, artists, and themes of the Lahore Biennale 01. In order to address the dynamics of “public engagement” in the arts, LB01 will test the parameters of “art” and “public,” and contextualize this relation within the specificities of Lahore and in a global context. For this purpose, the LB01 will develop art in public spaces and public programs along with opportunities for critical thinking and practice ... More
Local and international artists and curators, public figures and patrons gathered with art lovers over the weekend to open the second edition of the Lahore Biennale (LB02) on January 26, 2020. The inauguration ceremony took place amidst majestic surroundings in Hazuri Bagh, a garden in the city’s historic fort. Newly commissioned projects were unveiled alongside important works of contemporary art: Diana Al Hadid’s remarkable public sculpture in the gardens of Divan-e-Aam, inspired by the popular ... More
Where the Bus Stops is a project that carries in it the ethos of what LBF is truly about. The approach to all of our programs conducted within the public realm is to bring together diverse thinkers, practitioners and partners in such a way that outputs and outcomes generate new synergy that is collectively more effective than any isolated effort. By working with, and mobilising its partners, LBF has been able to champion this goal, as well as look out for the interests of all parties involved including those of the public. Winning proposals now mark vital spaces within Lahore’s ... More
The Lahore-based Awami Art Collective, a group of cultural practitioners, were invited to speak about their aim of bringing art to public spaces and why they considered such interventions to be of importance. Their ethos of celebrating diversity and enabling peaceful co-existence in a pluralist society particularly aligns them with the Lahore Biennale Foundation’s (LBF) own mission. The conversation covered the history of the collective as well as their recent projects and concerns, in order to reflect upon the context in which art can meaningfully engage with public space. The event was held at The Last Word on August 10, ... More
The 2018 Award recognizes the life and work of Pakistan’s eminent artist and social activist Lala Rukh (1948-2017)
A singular feature of our lives has become collecting and the ensuing dissemination of personal narratives in an already pluralistic, diverse world. New media and personal outpost satellite services seem to have overridden the exclusive and insular rights of established media groups and publications. Media hierarchies seem to be fading away rapidly. Copyrights, ownership, authorship of information are open to discussion. The ever-elusive question of the reliability and validity of empirical truth has been outstretched beyond the realm of the present, into inquiring past history and subsequently the future concerns. The collection and documentation of information, data, images, text and ... More
Keynote speech delivered by writer and political theorist Tariq Ali during the inaugural weekend of the Lahore Biennale. 27 January, 2020, National College of Arts (NCA), Mall Road To view the speech, please visit: Keynote speech by Tariq Ali Tariq Ali was born in Lahore in 1943, a city which was still under British colonial rule before becoming part of Pakistan in 1947. He studied Politics and Philosophy at Oxford and was the first Pakistani ... More