NEGOTIATING HYBRID MODERNITIES IN CONTEMPORARY PAKISTANI ART

Abstract

This paper discusses the chosen works of contemporary Pakistani artists Shahzia Sikander, Rashid Rana, and Omar Gilani in order to understand how hybridity can be considered a critical measure of contemporary South Asian art formed under the influence of colonial modernity. It claims that hybridity in these works does not mean a process of cultural compromise and straightforward fusion of traditions, but rather a conscious visual and conceptual strategy, as a result of which colonial modernity is exposed as fragmented, unstable, and ideologically constructed. These artists use hybrid visual languages instead of accepting Western models of modernity as universally applicable, to challenge the power of colonial art histories and representation systems. The paper will examine how these artists disrupt the colonial hierarchies of art and representation by reading them through the works of Partha Mitter, Iftikhar Dadi, and Nicholas Mirzoeff. Sikander refigures Indo-Persian miniature painting in SpiNN to break down colonial hierarchies of fine art and craft. Red Carpet by Rana employs the aspect of digital fragmentation to show the contradictions and violence within globalized modernity. In The Trucker, Gilani involves Islamic geometric abstraction and popular visual culture to repossess the traditions of knowledge that were pushed to the background by colonial rule. The paper proposes that contemporary South Asian artists create alternative modernities based on local visual histories and in critical relation to the realities of the present world.