Pattern

Pattern marks the first solo exhibition of Navjot Altaf in the Arabian Peninsula. Featuring site-specific installations, sculptures, videos, drawings and photo prints, the exhibition foregrounds Navjot’s longstanding commitment to issues of climate-change, ecology and feminism and the challenges they face in the digital age.

Navjot’s practice stands at the intersection of art and activism. With a career spanning over five decades, she is among the leading voices of her generation to regard art as a medium of social change. Pattern presents works created since 2015, the year of the United Nations Climate Change Conference and the Paris Climate Accords that marked a watershed moment in announcing a global agreement towards the mitigation of carbon emission levels among nearly 200 countries. Since then, there has been a dramatic rise of visual representation of climate change in mainstream media, using new technologies and real-time data. Navjot’s exhibition at Ishara juxtaposes the new and traditional forms of representing environmental crises to critically reflect on the way we think about the future of the planet and society.

The exhibition is curated by Sabih Ahmed, Associate Director and Curator at the Ishara Art Foundation, and will be accompanied by the launch of Navjot’s new two-volume publication titled ‘Navjot at Work’ and ‘Artist’s Notes’; physical and virtual tours; educational programmes and a newly commissioned text by Zasha Colah.

Photo: Detail view of Lost Text – SUBTLE, 2017