The Sanat Initiative is hosting an art exhibition featuring works by Adeel uz Zafar, Meher Afroz, Muhammad Zeeshan, RM Naeem and Scheherezade Junejo.
Titled ‘Fixed Price’, the show will run at the gallery until August 11.‘Fixed Price’, the first exhibition curated by Abid Aziz Merchant, the co-founder of the Sanat Initiative, reflects on his experience of the last eight years running a commercial gallery in Pakistan, and building global networks with artists and collectors.
In an uncertain economic system beset with inflation, devaluation and disrupted flows of capital, the art world is premised on relationships, friendships and trust.
Reflecting on price negotiation and the intricacies of the art market itself, the show investigates on what it may mean to maintain this important node as a constant and important infrastructure of support in the art world.
Adeel uz Zafar is an internationally acclaimed artist and art educator. Zafar holds a BFA with distinction from the prestigious National College of Arts (NCA), Lahore. Soon after concluding his studies, Zafar spent time working as an illustrator, an experience that greatly influenced his practice.
The form of his signature work has since evolved to a haunting depiction of monochromatic images, and his fascination with black and white pushes his medium and practice towards newer directions and exploration of a moving image with broader connotations.
Always interested in history, Zafar relates to the modern time and re-contextualises timeline, connoting the credence, countries, conquests and casualties that have occurred to shape social, cultural, religious and political identities as they stand today.
He is currently permanent faculty at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture (IVSAA), Karachi.
Zafar has participated in many national and international exhibitions. He has presented his work at international art fairs, festivals and biennales, and participated in both national and international art residencies. Zafar’s interest of narrating a story that is so heavily seeped in modern history and the acceptance on modern platform to disseminate provoked him to dive into a directorial debut to make an art house abstract slow motion film.
‘The End’ brings out the ugliness and is a grim reminder of how intolerant as a society and nation we have become. It was screened as an official selection of the prestigious UK Asian Film Festival in 2021 and was a nominee for the Satyajit Ray (Ray of Hope) award.Meher Afroz, professor at the IVSAA .
and a member of the Pakistan Arts Council, Karachi, is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Pride of Performance Award by the Government of Pakistan in 2014, and an honourable mention at the 6th Asian Biennale in 1993 in Bangladesh.
Meher graduated with honours in fine arts from the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Lucknow, India, in 1971.
She has been part of numerous national and international workshops and residencies, including the Studio RM International Residency in 2010; Workshop in Toulouse, France, in 1996; Painter Workshop at Alliance Francaise, Islamabad, in 1995; Painter Workshop at Goethe Institut, Lahore, in 1993; Printmaking Workshop with Walter Crump at American Center, Karachi, in 1993 and Woodcut Techniques Workshop at Kala Institute, San Francisco, USA, in 1991.
Meher’s work has been featured in notable publications like 50 Years of Visual Arts in Pakistan (1997) by Prof Quddus Mirza, Pioneering Prospective (1998) by Niilofur Farrukh and Image and Identity (1999) by Dr Akbar Naqvi.
Meher has shown her work in several solo and group exhibitions in Pakistan, UK, Sri Lanka, Canada, Iraq, India, Hong Kong, UAE, France, Nepal, USA, Bangladesh, Australia and Italy. She lives and works in Karachi.
Muhammad ZeeshanMuhammad Zeeshan was born in 1980 in Mirpurkhas, and received his BFA in miniature painting from the NCA in 2003. Zeeshan lives and works in Karachi, and he is currently adjunct faculty of the IVSAA.The direction he takes with a particular work is heavily determined by the medium in which he is working.
However, motifs such as roosters carry across his works and are reminiscent of his time growing up in Pakistan.Additionally, Zeeshan has stated that his artworks tread the thin boundary between found imagery and originality ascribed to any visual that exists.
He has exhibited internationally across Europe, Asia, Africa, North America and Australia, participating in numerous international museum exhibitions.
His recent solo exhibitions include Money Provides, Culture Aspires II, Sanat Initiative (2021); Nangeli, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London (2021); Money Provides, Culture Aspires, Sanat Initiative (2020); Serving with White Gloves, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, Berlin (2019); Art Dubai Solo Project, Sanat Initiative (2018); Refreshment, Sanat Initiative (2017); Contemporary Istanbul, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery (2017); Funkier Than A Mosquito’s Twitter, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery (2015); One for the Birds, Gandhara Art Space (2014); Safar Nama, Canvas Gallery (2014) and Special ‘Siri’ Series, Aicon Gallery, New York (2011).
His selected group exhibitions include Pretty Art For Pretty People, Sanat Initiative (2020); All the Days and Nights, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London (2020); Art Dubai, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery (2017); Present Re-Inventions, Grosvenor Gallery, London (2014) and Havelian Express, CAIS Gallery, Hong Kong (2010).
His work can be found in private and public collections, including Hundal Collection, Chicago; British Museum, London; Metropolitan Museum, New York; Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan, and was recently acquired by the Pacific Asia .
Museum in Pasadena, California; the Devi Art Foundation, India, and the Walton Family Collection, USA.His curatorial projects include Mera Safar, Zahoor ul Ikhlaq Gallery, NCA (2020), and the Karachi Biennale 2019 (KB19). He has also participated in numerous art fairs.
