Very excited that our residency projects are coming to LDF 2024 👀

The exhibition will showcase work created in collaboration with artist calligrapher – and now dear friend – @muzzumil_ruheel_studio, together with the artisans in Banarsi Colony, Mohammad Yaseen and the Ansari family.

With us, some exemplary work from other 2 artistic pairs that I am keen to share with you:
@ardossal & @claudia_e_walton, @shaukatkhokhar_artworks & @nelebergmans and artisans, @arifmahmoodphoto , Shamoon Haider

This project was possible thanks to @saimazaidistudio @numaishkhi , @thiss.studio and @britishcouncilpakistan

(Pictures from our exhibition in Karachi, Pakistan earlier this year)

14-21 September, SITE, London

Special thanks to:
@kohim for all the wonderful pictures
@rowan_blac for continuous support
Saima and family for sharing their time and home
@saramahmoodmuzzumil for being a friend
@inguuuna ✨

“Jhuley Lal: Crafting the Contemporary” is a dialogue between heritage and modernity, explored through an exhibition of pieces designed and fabricated as part of a collaborative residency project in Shikarpur and Karachi in 2023. The exhibition comes as the economic viability of traditional crafts in Pakistan faces severe strain, exacerbated by the 2022 floods and a cultural shift towards the mass-produced.

The project, initiated by Numaish Karachi and THISS Studio, supported by the British Council was conceived as a strategic intervention, bringing together leading emergent artists and designers from Pakistan and the UK with local craftspeople from Khairpur, Shikarpur and Karachi. The artisans found themselves in dialogue with modern creative practitioners, leading to an infusion of contemporary aesthetics with age-old methods.

The pieces place collaboration at their heart, with practitioners working together across cultures and occasionally language barriers to co-create designs. The residency allowed them a temporarily shared context in the crafts villages where materials are grown, extracted and processed. Some pieces mine the existing building fabric for materials, and others use raw materials and learn from their processing.