Grey Noise Gallery in Dubai invites you to attend A Mirror in My Pocket, a thought-provoking solo exhibition by interdisciplinary Pakistani artist Fazal Rizvi. It features his body of work inspired by his experience in trekking through the mountains of the Gilgit-Baltistan region in Pakistan. The show welcomes all visitors until 20 July 2024.
In 2020, Rizvi embarked on a journey through Pakistan’s Karakoram mountain range during his residency at the Jan van Eyck Academie in the Netherlands. His goal was to record the sounds of glaciers and the surrounding landscape. However, upon reviewing the recordings, Rizvi discovered that the audio files failed to capture the true essence of what he had heard. This “failure of listening” sparked his research project focused on the concept of failure: specifically, the challenges of recording, listening, and documenting such a dynamic landscape aurally.
This experience led Rizvi to uncover a deeper desire to find refuge in these mountains and to capture their imagery and sounds. This, in its turn, sparked a critical inquiry into the significance of this desire and its place within the historical and cultural gaze upon such terrains. The works displayed in A Mirror in My Pocket (props, risoprints, and collected images) examine these themes by delving into the intersections of the present and the past, the colonial and historical narratives, the mythical and material, the molecular and geological, and the symbolic and tangible.
The exhibition explores the complexities of perceiving and documenting the natural world, challenging the notion that these landscapes can be easily interpreted or recorded. It highlights the inherent difficulties in capturing the essence of these terrains and the desire to connect with them, questioning the broader implications of this pursuit within a historical and cultural framework.
About the artist
Fazal Rizvi (b. 1987, Karachi, Pakistan), who resides in his hometown, obtained his BFA Honors from the National College of Art (Lahore, Pakistan). Since 2014, he has been working and teaching at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture (Karachi).
Rizvi’s practice intersects the personal, social, and political realms. Employing text, he explores personal and national notions of loss and absence. Rizvi experiments with forms of communication such as letters and dialogue to spotlight the fragility and failures that often constitute intimacy. The other themes Rizvi explores in his work are the materiality and immateriality of the sea and its borders, as well as the ideas of memory, forgetting, and monument making. Since 2020, the artist has been deeply involved in long-term research on the glacial and mountainous terrains of northern Pakistan.
Rizvi has displayed his art pieces in many exhibitions, such as the 17th Jogja Biennale (Jakarta, Indonesia, 2023); The Sherbet Project (a solo show at Grey Noise, 2022); Correctionville (Hoogcrutz, Netherlands, 2021); Lahore Biennale 2018; Karachi Biennale 2017; Running out of Tape (Fourfold Gallery, London, UK, 2015); The Morning After (a solo show at Arcus Project, Moriya, Japan, 2011); and others. The list of residences Rizvi has undertaken includes Cite des Arts with Institut Francaise (Paris, France, 2023), Jan Van Eyck Academie Residency (Maastricht, Netherlands, 2020 – 2021), and Pro Helvetia New Delhi Residency (2020), to name a few. In 2014, the artist received the Charles Wallace Pakistan Trust Award for Gasworks Studios Residency (London).
To get more information about A Mirror In My Pocket, please visit the exhibition’s official web page.
In addition, you might be interested in visiting Steel Life by Arnaud Rivieren.
