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In Islamabad, a dream comes true

— Photo: By Special Arrangement

Showcasing art: The National Art Gallery in Islamabad, with the sculpture by Jamil Baloch of towering black-veiled women in the forecourt.

It was 29 years in the making and had almost been given up as a lost cause when, in 2005, President Pervez Musharraf happened to stumble on it. Pointing out of his office window in the Aiwan-e-Sadar, he asked one of his aides about the eyesore across the road — a piece of land flooded by rainwater with some steel roods sticking out of bits and pieces of concrete. Within days, the Pakistan National Art Gallery (NAG) was on the fast track to completion.

Ever on the lookout for ways to project a “soft image” of Pakistan to counter the “terrorist” tag given to it by the world, the President authorised the release of funds for the $8.8-million (Pakistan Rs.530 million) project. He should be happy with the results. Inaugurated by him last month, the NAG is Pakistan’s first proper state-owned gallery.

From the brick building with its stylish aluminium-covered scoops on the roof, the dramatic Jamil Baloch sculpture of a group of towering black-veiled women in the forecourt, to the collection of art, sculpture and installations in the quiet grandeur of its halls, it showcases the best of the country’s art and architecture, and sends out the important message that there is more to Pakistan than the shenanigans of its generals, politicians, and mullahs.

“It obviously provides an opportunity to artists as well as the country to exhibit the best works of art in the country, but it also provides a learning opportunity to the country, and simultaneously to the rest of the world, to understand where we stand in the world of arts,” said Naeem Tahir, the chief executive of the Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA) that runs the NAG.

The works of icons such as Sadequain and Zahoor al Akhlaque, Ustad Allah Bux, A.R. Chugtai, Gulgee and Jamil Naqsh have pride of place in the “grand hall” but each of the 13 galleries is a treasure trove of art that has never been seen all in one place before.

Before this, the PNCA’s own collection of about 350 paintings used to hang in a nondescript rented place with limited space and bad lighting. These now adorn the walls of the new NAG, as do the works of more than 250 artists, including contemporary Pakistani artists who live and exhibit abroad or are big names in the international art circuit, all put together from private collections around the world.

For instance, “Clash of Civilisations” by Ifthikar and Elizabeth Dadi, that brings together the work of Pakistani artists living abroad, was displayed at Cornell University.

Rashid Rana, whose spectacular three-dimensional “Dead Birds Flying,” in wood, mirrors and digital images, offers the viewer perspectives of a cityscape and urban conflict, is perhaps better known internationally than in Pakistan. He exhibits regularly at Nature Morte in New Delhi and Gallery Chemould in Mumbai, and calls India his “artistic home,” but said it was “really great” that he was now exhibiting at such a prestigious venue in Pakistan.

Like many others, Rana was commissioned to make this installation for the inauguration of the NAG, as curators scrambling to put it all together within 18 months came across unforeseen problems. “Finding work large enough for the spaces in the gallery was a problem. We did not aspire to sizes like that,” said Salima Hashmi, an artist herself and the curator of the gallery’s sculpture section. “This gallery is certainly going to transform the aspirations of artists.”

Ms. Hashmi says she used to worry that sculptors such as Shahid Sajjad, whose imposing work in wood “Horizontal Interferences” is one of the centrepieces of the section, would never find enough room to show anywhere in Pakistan, quite aside from the fear that there was no space for artists who explored their creativity in three dimensions, anti-Islamic as it was decreed at one time.

But at the NAG, space, of any kind, is not a concern; the sculpture and “substance” section especially sends out the message that the state is ready for all types of creative expression, whether it is Jamil Baloch’s clay and metal work depicting the landscape of Balochistan as a piece of parched and cracked earth ravaged by bombs; or Nazia Khan’s depiction of the social constraints on women in the installation “Human Body Structure,” which consists quite simply of a metal corset; or Hamra Abbas’ video installation “Left Right,” in which men in uniform march to a disturbing drumbeat on a tranquil sea.

On his inaugural tour, President Musharraf may have been taken aback by the installation of a throne made out of plastic “lotas,” the vessel used for washing up, and the word used in Pakistan to describe political turncoats. Had he gone up to Gallery 8, he would have been amazed by the collection of contemporary miniatures, particularly the exhibits called “Dialogue With Tradition,” the work of eight young miniaturists trained at Lahore’s National College of Arts. They were given one digital image of the master miniaturist Haji Sharif’s works, and asked to create their own response to that work — with fascinating results.

Also on display are works from Imran Qureshi’s 2003 “karkhana” experiment, in which six contemporary miniaturists revived the concept of the Mughal atelier, by collaborating across three continents on each of the 12 works in the exhibition.

That the architect of the NAG is himself an artist and collector who runs a private gallery has helped in the creation of a building that shows no less an understanding of art than who have created the works housed inside. Naeem Pasha is 26 years older from the time he won the design competition and submitted the first blueprint for the NAG, but as he put it, it was a “journey of love and at times madness” but one of commitment and hope too.

“The choicest morsel in architecture is service to art,” said Mr. Pasha. That, combined with the idea of creating a building of national importance, was a dream-come-true, he said. But he wanted to create a structure that, in his words, had “poised grandeur rather than the arrogant monumentality” of national buildings. So he chose brick for the NAG, in contrast to the marble of the other “power structures” in the vicinity, such as the Aiwan-e-Sadr.

“It is a humble building material and gives you the scale of people rather than power,” said Mr. Pasha, who counts the Air Force Academy in Risalpur, the St. Thomas church in Islamabad, and the archaeology museum in Peshawar among his significant contributions to Pakistan’s architecture.

The NAG is designed “from inside out,” so that it not just looks good from the outside, but has grand interiors too. Diffused daylight filters in through the scooped skylights. The halls are spacious. As in all good museums or galleries, visitors can go around without missing an exhibit, and return to the starting point with ease.

Nothing can ever be 100 per cent perfect. So it is with the NAG. Huge patches of damp on some walls, paint splattered on the skylights and sloppy tile work on parts of the flooring take away a little of its splendour. As do complaints that some of Pakistan’s well known artists — Ghulam Rasul, for instance — find no space. Another concern is, bar the PNCA collection, most of the works will go back to their owners in November when the inaugural exhibition ends, leaving the gallery sort of empty.

According to Ms. Hashmi, the PNCA will have to move “very, very fast” to acquire what is available, and to get benefactors to loan or give their collections to the gallery. But problems aside, Pakistan’s art world is exhilarated. As Ms. Hashmi put it, Pakistan’s artists “talked about [a national gallery], dreamt about it for so long.” Now it’s here.

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