Farida Batool
@faridabatool1970

Artist bio

Farida Batool is a Lahore based visual artist exploring Pakistan’s political upheavals and tumultuous history amidst global challenges. She uses her multimedia approach to navigate, as a flaneur, through the multiple issues of identity(ies) in the city, its everydayness and cultural challenges, as well as having focused closely on the notion of gender and its manifestation within patriarchal structures. She has exhibited extensively in many international and local solo and prestigious group shows. She is an active member of Awami Art Collective which aims to use art in public spaces to generate a discourse of peaceful co-existence.

Batool, is a visual artist interested in exploring Pakistan’s political upheavals and tumultuous history, and developing a comprehensive cultural critique of everyday life. She received her BA in Fine Arts from the National College of Arts, Lahore, her MA in Art History and Theory from COFA at the University of New South Wales, and her PhD from the Centre for Media Studies at SOAS, London. She has been teaching since 1997 and currently is the Dean of Faculty of Humanities, at National College of Arts, Lahore. She has exhibited extensively in many international and local solo and prestigious group shows.

She is an active member of Awami Art Collective which aims to use art in public spaces to generate a discourse of peaceful co-existence. She was involved in many art projects and community workshops for awareness raising among women communities in several urban and rural areas of Pakistan as well as conducted cultural and political dialogue among different communities. Batool presented papers and presentations at international conferences and workshops including Yale University USA; Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Montreal, Canada; Oxford University, St. Joseph’s University Philadelphia and many more

Artist statement

The idea of a garden, whether historical, religious or personal is akin to playfulness, joy and freedom. These works takes you to a personal and political journey, where one embraces everything you and me, surrounded by water, flowers, and woodless trees. The ‘neo normalized’ aesthetics constructed between spaces encounters the abstract connection with the present.

Mahnoor Ali Shah
@mahnooraliwork

Artist bio

Mahnoor Ali Shah (b. 1998) is a visual artist whose work examines the intricacies of emotions and the challenges of motherhood in her work. She received a sculpture degree from the National College of Arts with distinction. Mahnoor uses a wide variety of media, such as paintings, drawings, video installations, and soft sculptures, to tell stories that are both universal and intensely personal. Her artwork has been displayed in collective exhibits around Pakistan. At present, she resides and works in Lahore.

Artist statement

My work blends the personal with the universal, drawing from my own lived experiences to evoke emotional narratives that speak to broader collective realities. Whether addressing the quiet complexities of motherhood or the shifting terrain of inner emotional life, my practice offers intimate reflections that invite empathy and connection. Through material experimentation—ranging from the tactile softness of textiles to the immediacy of video, projection and and drawing—I explore how different forms can carry emotional weight and nuance. Storytelling lies at the heart of my process, where each work becomes a vessel for layered meaning. By foregrounding themes of vulnerability, resilience, and care, I create spaces that not only acknowledge fragility but also celebrate strength, nurturing a quiet yet powerful dialogue between the viewer and the work.

Wood & Harrison@woodandharrison

Artist bio

John Wood (born in 1969 in Hong Kong) and Paul Harrison (born in 1966 in Wolverhampton, England) both studied at the Bath College of Higher Education. They have been working together since 1993.

Wood and Harrison create video works of minimalist performances, touching on themes of tragedy, comedy and irony. They are experiments in the physical limitations, scale and movement of the human body in relation to the surrounding environment, which has usually been constructed by the artists

Wood and Harrison have exhibited their work extensively internationally. Recent exhibitions include Some Words, Some More Words, IKON Gallery, Birmingham travelling to Musée Departmental d’Art Contemporain, Rochechouart and Kunstmuseum; ThunStudio Trisorio, Rome and Naples, 2009; MAM Project 005, Mori Art Museum,Tokyo, Japan, 2007; Art Now, Lightbox, Tate Britain, London; Selected Works, MOMA, Queens, New York, 2004. Group shows include Le Mouvement des Images, Musee d’Art Moderne Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 2006; Twenty Six (Drawing and Falling Things), Carnegie Museum Pittsburgh, 2005; the British Art Show 5, 2000.

Artist statement

John Wood and Paul Harrison make things that move and things that don’t, things that are flat and things that are not, things that are mildly amusing and things that are definitely not. They make works that form a kind of reference manual for how to do, make, build, or draw things that you probably never want to do, make, build, or draw. They do it for you. Even though you don’t need them to.

Something basic feels revealed by Wood and Harrison’s irregular patterns of inexhaustible, developed and developing engagement. Curiously, meaning accumulates but is not imposed, not in terms of intention, or application, not the system of a formalist lexicon but a basic law that is also un-nameable, manifested through complex interaction, against the fog of normative usage, through the scrutiny and re-presentation, even, of the normal, the everyday – studied, isolated, plucked – phrased even: action and inaction, cause and effect, body and object. Life, huh. Like I say, these things happen.