ISLAMABAD: Tanzara Gallery on Thursday opened an exhibition of renowned Pakistani artist Muhammad Atif Khan, titled ‘Tales of the Heart’.

Atif Khan had successfully built a niche for himself in the local as well as the international art market. His work interweaves Islamic miniature painting with modern geometric designs and popular culture.

The artist successfully creates mysterious narratives through his juxtapositions of Mughal-era figures within mandala like landscapes.

As a contemporary image maker, Asif Khan pushed his artistic limits through varied artistic thoughts and visual explorations of socio-political and cultural issues.

“He has built a unique visual vocabulary of interweaving storytelling that addresses itself through a soul searching process. Atif Khan’s work has been widely exhibited home and abroad and is part of private and public collections worldwide,” said the organizers.

Asif Khan is the recipient of numerous prestigious international awards and has participated in workshops and residencies locally and globally. Asif Khan’s work has been part of collections namely at the Bradford Museum in the United Kingdom (UK), Aga Khan Museum, in Toronto, Canada, Sharjah Art Museum, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Islamic Museum of Australia in Melbourne, Australia.

He has several solo shows to his credit in Pakistan, UK, Jordan, Switzerland and India as well as participated in numerous group shows. In 2015, he won the Lahore Biennale Foundation’s Open Call competition and developed the monumental site-specific installation ‘City within a city’ at the Chowk Istanbul in Lahore.

Alongside his artistic practice, Asif Khan is faculty member at the National College of Arts in Lahore, since 2005, and serving as assistant professor in the department of fine art.

Visitors to the show admired Asif Khan’s style saying that the artist revived traditional art with new forms also appreciating what they believed was tremendous technical finesse.

Another visitor to the show and an art collector believed that the artist created a world that was perhaps miniaturized in its scale but absolutely universal sometimes in its content or in its ambition.

The show would continue till November 9.

Published in Dawn, October 28th, 2022