Ishara Art Foundation
Urdu Worlds marks the first contemporary art exhibition dedicated to the Urdu language in the UAE. Curated by Hammad Nasar, the exhibition is a visual conversation around language between Ali Kazim and Zarina, and the first comprehensive presentation of Kazim’s works in the GCC. The show explores how language provides the tools with which we create and shape our internal ‘worlds’. Rather than simply describing what surrounds us, words are what give rise to our private lived experiences and shared cultural understandings.
Despite their distinct personal histories and artistic practices, the two artists are united by a profound sensitivity to the Urdu language. Born in Aligarh, India, Zarina’s itinerant life across continents led her to find home in Urdu, weaving its script, proverbs and poetry into her delicate and sparse print works. Lahore-based multimedia artist Ali Kazim likewise grounds his ‘Urdu world’ in a sense of place while exhibiting an eclecticism of influences that reflects the composite and layered history of the language.
Urdu Worlds highlights the power of art as a bridge to access the imaginative worlds of artists though we may not share a written language. Inviting viewers to adopt the unfamiliar vocabularies of these worlds, it raises questions about the appropriation of language by institutions to construct narratives of belonging and exclusion. The exhibition draws attention to the ability of words to articulate identity, and the consequent urgency of maintaining a connection to our native languages in an era of migration and exile.
Artworks for Urdu Worlds have been loaned from Cristea Roberts Gallery, Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation, the Ishara Art Foundation and the Prabhakar Collection, Jhaveri Contemporary, Sharjah Art Foundation, and the private collections of Clemy Sheffield, Mrs Fane, Dr Furqaan Ahmed, Hasan Askari, the Jones Family Collection, Keir McGuinness, Sasheen and Shehzad Anwar, Shazad Ghaffar and Moni Mohsin, Sonam Kapoor and Anand Ahuja, Taimur Hassan, and Zafar Ahmadullah and Tarika Singh.
The exhibition has been generously supported by J. Safra Sarasin (Middle East) Ltd., Emirates Insurance, Shazad Ghaffar and Moni Mohsin, and Taimur Hassan, with logistical support from Jhaveri Contemporary.
Special thanks to RIT Cary Graphic Arts Collection and Freight Systems.
About the artists:
Zarina (1937–2020) was born in Aligarh, India, and after years of itinerant moving, she settled in New York where she lived and worked for over four decades. After receiving a degree in mathematics, she went on to study woodblock printing in Bangkok and Tokyo, and intaglio with S. W. Hayter at Atelier-17 in Paris. Most recently, she was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, India (2020-2021) and the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis, MO (2019-2020), and her work was highlighted in the inaugural exhibition of the Ishara Art Foundation, entitled Altered Inheritances: Home is a Foreign Place (2019).
She exhibited at numerous venues internationally including her retrospective exhibition entitled Zarina: Paper Like Skin at the Guggenheim, New York (2013), the Art Institute of Chicago (2013) and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2012), and she represented India at the 2011 Venice Biennale. An extensive selection of her work is held by the Ishara Art Foundation and the Prabhakar Collection, and her work is also in the permanent collections of Tate Modern, London; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and The Menil Collection, Houston.
Ali Kazim (b.1979, Pattoki) lives and works in Lahore. He received a BFA from the National College of Arts, Lahore in 2002 and his MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art, London in 2011. His work has been exhibited widely in solo and group shows internationally, including: Art Mill Museum, Doha (2024); Lahore Biennale (2024, 2020 & 2018); The Box, Plymouth (2024); MK Gallery, Milton Keynes (2023); Al Mureijah Art Spaces, Sharjah (2023); Dhaka Art Summit (2023, 2016); Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai (2023); Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (2022); The Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2022); Hinterland, Vienna (2022); Art Sonje Center, Seoul (2022); The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Oxford (2022); COMO Museum of Art, Lahore (2019); Karachi Biennale, Karachi (2019 & 2017); 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane (2018); Office of Contemporary Art Norway, Oslo (2016); Hinterland Galerie, Vienna (2016); Seoul Arts Center, Hangaram Art Museum, Seoul (2016/2015); and Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (2015).
Ali Kazim’s work is in public collections, including the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Oxford; British Museum, London; Burger Collection, Hong Kong; Creative Cities Collection, Beijing; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Kemal Lazar Foundation, Tunis; Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority (Islamabad International Airport); Qatar Museums, Doha; Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; Rose Art Museum, Waltham; Samdani Art Foundation, Dhaka; Sharjah Art Foundation; Tate, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London.