The importance of staying quiet: Fahd Burki

In 2014, The importance of staying quiet was exhibited in Hong Kong as an attempt to acknowledge a minimal vocabulary within Pakistani art. Conceived by Saira Ansari and Umer Butt, the presentation brought together works spanning six decades, between the 1950s and 2010s, and included Anwar Jalal Shemza (1928–1985), Zahoor ul Akhlaq (1941–1999), Lala Rukh (1948–2017), Rashid Rana (b. 1968), Hamra Abbas (b. 1976), Sara Salman (b. 1978), Ali Kazim (b. 1979), Ayesha Jatoi (b. 1979), Fahd Burki (b. 1981), and Iqra Tanveer (b. 1983).

Rather than showing signature works often associated with these artists – most of whom are not minimalists – the exhibition highlighted moments where they pared form and image down to their most distilled elements. The proposition was that minimal vocabularies in Pakistan are not anomalies or exceptions, but part of a more layered understanding of artistic abstraction in the region.