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Lot 390

Waseem Ahmed
(Pakistan, born 1976)
Untitled,

8 April 2014, 10:30 BST
London, New Bond Street

Sold for £2,500 inc. premium

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Waseem Ahmed (Pakistan, born 1976)

Untitled, pigment colours on wasli paper, signed in Urdu lower right, framed, 39.4 x 22.9cm (15 1/2 x 9in).

Footnotes

This work was executed in 2009.

Provenance: Private UK Collection.

Literature:
Sharpe, Gemma. Waseem Ahmed: Silver Bullet, Laurent Delaye Gallery, London, illustrated no. 6

Exhibited:
Waseem Ahmed: Silver Bullet, Laurent Delaye Gallery, London, 22nd January - 27th February 2010.


In the present work, Pakistani artist Waseem Ahmed has taken the story of Abraham and combined it with current events taking place in Pakistan. This religious narrative, which is written in the Qu'ran and the Old Testament, tells of the sacrifice of Isaac, Abraham's son, as a test of a father's love in the face of loyalty to God. A classical pastiche in Western art and beyond, the sacrifice of Isaac ends with the mercy of divine intervention; Isaac is saved and in his place a ram is slaughtered.

It is no understatement that in recent years, Pakistan's current events have shifted quite drastically in regards to Islam and how religion should be interpreted and taught. Ahmed, who attended the National College of Arts in Lahore, has taken the image of the sacrificed ram and combined it with the image of a mullah dictating a group of veiled women. The question Ahmed has raised in this work is whether this creature, a combination of a sacrificed ram and teacher of Islam, really teaching us what we need to know about Islam, or what he thinks we need to know. (Sharpe, Gemma. Waseem Ahmed: Silver Bullet, Laurent Delaye Gallery, London 2010.)
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