Numaish Karachi and THISS Studio are launching the first London exhibition of Jhuley Lal on September 14th in partnership with the British Council. The exhibition will be on display throughout the 2024 London Design Festival from 14 - 21 September, and will showcase innovative British & Pakistani co-design.
“Jhuley Lal: Crafting the Contemporary” is a dialogue between heritage and modernity, explored through an exhibition of pieces designed and fabricated as part of a collaborative residency project in Shikarpur and Karachi in 2023. The exhibition comes as the economic viability of traditional crafts in Pakistan faces severe strain, exacerbated by the 2022 floods and a cultural shift towards the mass-produced. The project, initiated by Numaish Karachi and THISS Studio and supported by the British Council, was conceived as a strategic intervention, bringing together leading emergent artists and designers from Pakistan and the UK with local craftspeople from Khairpur, Shikarpur and Karachi.
The artisans were placed in dialogue with creative practitioners, leading to an infusion of contemporary aesthetics with age-old methods. The result is a vibrant tapestry of artistry that honours its roots while taking a tentative step into the future. The pieces place collaboration at their heart, with practitioners working together across cultures and occasionally language barriers to co-create designs. The residency allowed them a temporarily shared context in the crafts villages where materials are grown, extracted and processed. Some pieces mine the existing building fabric for materials, and others use raw materials and learn from their processing. “Jhuley Lal: Crafting the Contemporary” does more than display a fusion of old and new; it offers a measured exploration of how cultural heritage might find new forms of relevance in a rapidly changing world. The exhibition features the pieces made during the residency, along with photo documentation by prolific Pakistani photojournalist Arif Mahmood.
Artists
Irene Albino | Haniya Aslam | Nele Bergmans | Ali Reza Dossal | Zahra Ebrahim | Shamoon Haider| Arif Mahmood | Tahir Mahmood | Dan Pope | Muzummil Ruheel | Fakeero Solanki | Shaukat Ali Syed | Claudia Walton | Saima Zaidi
Artisans
Shikarpur:
Aushaq Ali Bablani Soomro | Salman Ali Bablani Soomro | Abdul Rauf | Ali Haider | Shahid Hussain Bhatti | Abdul Qadeer
Khairpur: Ali raza | Luqman Village, Mohammad Hassan | Luqman Village, Ghulamzadi & Raiba | Shoaib Rind Village
Karachi: Mohammad Yaseen | Zaheer
Exhibitions
Curation: Saima Zaidi, Numaish Karachi
Exhibition Design: THISS Studio