Footnotes

Provenance
Property from a private collection, Pakistan.

Published
''Pop' goes my heart,' The Express Tribune, 28 August 2015, https://tribune.com.pk/story/946743/miniature-marvel-pop-goes-my-heart

'The characters I used are from two seemingly different time periods...We have Mughal characters that are from our heritage and cartoons which belong to the digital era. Blending the two worlds together has helped me produce a narrative which is different and unique.' Farhat Ali

Ali's practise focuses on the reinterpretation of history and popular imagery. He has created a distinct visual language by fusing two beloved art forms, miniatures and cartoons. Born in Badin, Sindh he started his career as a billboard painter and then enrolled at the Centre of Excellence in Art & Design, Jamshoro and the National College of Arts, Lahore from where he graduated in 2015.

Reinterpreting the beloved miniature format, Ali brings together two seemingly different art forms and melds them together to question history and fiction. In Untitled (Beauty & the Beast) we see the couple in a loving embrace, a nayika and the Beast, from the 1991 Disney classic, Beauty & the Beast.

'Beyond the immediate element of humour the improbable encounters and liaisons between the protagonists spark debate on their implausibility. By "disrupting" how we understand something, we are more likely to question its fundamental existence and Ali's cameos provoke enquiry on several issues. The most obvious inconsistency is the East West variance. His comic approach diffuses the inevitable clash of civilisations between a classical 15th century South Asian era and contemporary Western society. He creates interactive moments between his characters without either losing his or her cultural identity.' (S. Ali, 'Art Fiend: Getting There,' DAWN, 6 September 2015, https://www.dawn.com/news/1204489)