KARACHI – Camera is a device often critiqued for prying; the photo exhibition titled ‘Prying’, which opened on Saturday at the Poppy Seed gallery and would run until January 26, is showing three photographers’ works, each of which leads the viewers through a different kind of vicarious experience as a result of their prying lenses, stated a press release issued by the gallery’s curator Sumbul Khan.
Mehreen Khalid’s photographs consciously pry into the domestic spaces of South Asian women in the diaspora; Umer Adil’s documentary photographs from the rural areas of Pakistan capture a defiant affront to the prying of the lens; and Najia Omer’s mixed media canvases allow the viewers to pry into her life, which is fraught with having to make adjustments with changing circumstances.
Khalid, better known as Lali, received her Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degree in Printmaking from Lahore’s National College of Arts (NCA) in 2003, and six years later her Master of Fine Arts degree in Photography from Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute where she was a Fulbright Scholar; she is currently an Associate Professor at the NCA, and has participated in several exhibitions in New York, Lahore and Islamabad; ‘Prying’ is her first show in Karachi.
Omer received her BFA degree from the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture (IVSAA) in 2008; whereas Adil graduated from the IVSAA with a BFA in Communication Design in 2002, and is primarily a documentary filmmaker who also exhibits his photographic work.
Besides Adil’s untitled series and Omer’s ‘Position’ series, the current exhibition also includes Khalid’s ‘Last Day, 707 Sylvan Rd, Michigan’; ‘Me, 2573 Fair Ave, Ohio’; ‘Me, Attic, 2573 Fair Ave, Ohio’; ‘Me, Cricket Ground, Aitchison College, Lahore’; ‘Me, Dining Room, 1318 West Argyle, Chicago’; ‘Saroos, Gulberg III, Lahore’; ‘Taimur & I, Breakfast Table 1, 707 Sylvan Rd, Michigan’; ‘Taimur & I, Breakfast Table 2, 707 Sylvan Rd, Michigan’; and ‘Taimur & I, Cannoneer Court, Brooklyn’.
Photos courtesy Poppy Seed gallery
