Under the banner of Grow and as part of the focus on South Asia, Asia NOW is proud to host a multigenerational selection of artists featured in Of Mountains and Seas, the ecologically-themed 2024 edition of the Lahore Biennale, curated by John Tain.

Among the participants are Hamra Abbas and Imran Qureshi, two leading artists working in Pakistan today. They each deploy local crafts such as stone inlay and blue and white ceramics as a way to lend historical perspective in addressing the region’s specific ecologies — all the more so as their works were originally displayed in the sixteenth-century Mughal heritage of Shalimar Gardens and Lahore Fort, renowned today as UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

They are joined by Feroza Hakeem, whose painting adapts the centuries-old miniature tradition to speak to current issues affecting the minority Hazara community, of which Hakeem is a member. Meanwhile, Fazal Rizvi engages the coexistence of human and geological time by looking to the country’s north, where the Himalayas, Karakorum, and Hindu Kush meet. Collectively, the artists suggest the continuing vitality of art in Pakistan, its unique emphasis on innovation within tradition, and the diversity of the country’s cultures and communities.

Meanwhile, two interactive performances will activate the public spaces of the Monnaie de Paris. Artist and activist Abuzar Madhu invites viewers to a ceremony bearing witness to the realities of Lahore’s historic River Ravi, increasingly threatened by pollution and mass-scale diversion. Rizvi, with Baneen Mirza (of the nomadic collective Khanabadosh Baithak), offers a performance that nourishes fair goers spiritually, intellectually, and culinarily, while emphasizing human beings’ connections to one another and to the earth.

Reflecting the Biennale’s broader goal of connecting contemporary artists of Pakistan with their peers from elsewhere, the curated presentation also includes Mella Jaarsma, whose textile installation, produced between Yogyakarta, Indonesia, where the artist is based, and Lahore, Pakistan, creates space for dialogue about land use and its ecological effects in the two Asian countries.

The global scope of the Biennale artists continues in the program of video works, mostly commissioned for the Biennale, including Sin Wai Kin, Stolon Press (Simryn Gill and Tom Stolon), Zheng Bo, and Gidree Bawlee (Salma Jamal Mousham and Kamrazzaman Shadhin), in addition to Bani Abidi and Fazal Rizvi.

Though only a fraction of the sixty-one artists who participated in Lahore Biennale 03 (2024) will be on view at Asia NOW, the presentation nevertheless gives a sense of the unique blend of cultural heritage and contemporary dynamism found in Pakistan today, as well as of the contribution the Lahore Biennale Foundation seeks to make to society through its global presentation of contemporary art.

The project is generously powered by the French Embassy to Pakistan, with in-kind support from Pakistan International Airlines.