First Edition Winners 1
1ST PLACE WINNER- BUSHRA WAQAS KHAN
The concept of cross-contamination has become increasingly relevant. Cross-contamination (that is, cross-pollination, exchange, or métissage) is always the result of an encounter between cultures or between cultural forms. This is a process that very much holds a central position in historical cultures. A culture is built from the proximity and exchange between two cultures that come into contact and that cross-contaminate each other: with loans, re-orientations and hybridization of identities (or parts of them). Bushra’s language perfectly explain this concept of cross-contamination. She specialises in a distinct form of art, miniature dresses and jackets, which combine printmaking with couture quality design.
The hero in Khan’s art are motifs extracted from affidavit papers (a statement on oath duly witnessed by an Oath Commissioner or a Notary Public) in Pakistan, recurring in all the dresses while the designs, predominantly Victorian, combined with South Asian craft detailing, emerge from a confluence of cultures.
Works available at Canvas Gallery, Karachi
2ND PLACE WINNER- MADHU DAS
We would define Madhu Das as an eclectic artist. He developed something like an “unbalancing system,” which, through the use of “natural objects”, and environments, aimed to broaden the field of human perception and to make the viewer an active participant.
The artist methodically re-appropriates and reinterprets the space around him utilizing photography and video.
Space has been subject to aesthetic, art-historical, philosophical, anthropological, geographical and political investigations, each with its idiosyncratic definitions. Space maintains a close relation with illusionism, narrativity, and the performative qualities of art. Space is especially interconnected with time, making it impossible to separate one from the other. In the current dynamic reality in which we live, it is hard to remain confined to just one modality of spatial thinking that will capture all of its complexity.
Madhu Das work oscillates between fact and fiction, dealing with the projection of identity onto the social and natural worlds, he conceptualizes shapes and forms and then bring them into being.
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