HAVE I EVER OPPOSED YOU? NEW ART FROM INDIA AND PAKISTAN
18 March – 22 May 2010

Rashid Rana (b. 1968, Pakistan)

Rashid Rana’s works vacillate between the micro and the macro as he creates a composite image arranged from thousands of ‘pixels’ or miniaturized photos, often depicting mundane scenes of life in his city of Lahore. In his work, Rana cleverly relates back to the history of art in Pakistan, his native country. Rana has also investigated the sexual objectification of women through the pornography industry in works that are fragmented collages made up of thousands of small, unfocused pornographic stills of women. By using both these representations of gender in a rigid manner, Rana is effectively destroying them both, forcing the viewer to look beyond them and critique the so-called machinery of truth from which they are born. A graduate of the National College of Arts, Lahore (with the most respected department for traditional miniature painting in the world), Rana deviated from his peers by moving into digital media and photography and away from the traditional painting techniques taught at the school. Yet in spite of his embrace of new media, Rana manages to wryly preserve the idea of the miniature in his work through his mosaic-like use of minute photographs in constructing his mural-size images.

Born in Lahore, Pakistan, the artist divides his time between Lahore and Toronto. He is the Faculty (associate professor) at the School of Visual Arts, Beaconhouse National University, Lahore. Among his major solos are The Politics of Fear, Albion, London (2007); Inaugural Show, National Art Gallery, Islamabad, Pakistan (2007); Reflected Looking, Nature Morte, New Delhi (2006); Identical Views, Nature Morte, New Delhi and V.M. Gallery, Karachi (2004); Non-Sense, Rohtas Gallery, Islamabad (2000), and Zahoor ul Akhlaq Gallery, NCA, Lahore. His work has been featured at the various prestigious shows and events like ShContemporary, Shanghai (2007); Thomas Erben Gallery, New York (2007); 5th Asia Pacific Triennale, Queensland Gallery of Art, Australia (2006); Artissima Art Fair, Turin, Italy (2006); Singapore Biennale (2006); and Art Basel (2006).