llomorphs of an Antecedent, a recent pop-up art show by The Roadside, featured work of renowned Pakistani artists including Laila Rahman, Jahanzeb Haroon, Aun Raza, Sahyr Sayed, Mohsin Shafi, Wajeeha Batool, Nisha Hassan, Zainab Hussain, Ayaz Jokhio, Zainab J Khawaja, and Hafsa Nauman.

The Roadside initiative, directed by artist Ali Arshad, seeks to up-end mainstream ways of exhibiting artwork. Last summer, they exhibited a series on public art with installations from a wide array of local artists in Lahore. This was the first time I was personally introduced to the initiative. I was very interested in how the public engaged with spray paint cans on a canvas — a piece engineered by Kaiser Irfan for the show titled Improvising Rhetoric(s) by The Roadside.

Galleries are institutional spaces, often very exclusive in their invite lists for artists and even more exclusive in their locations. This exhibition titled Allomorphs of an Antecedent was situated on 21 Commercial Zone. It is a two-storey space in Liberty Market. The building is painted mustard, the paint has chipped off in some places. The windows have lost their glass panes. Built in 1971, the top floor once served as living space for a joint family. The lower storey was reserved for their business. When Sahyr Sayed rediscovered the building, owned by her family, it had been abandoned for some time. A part of it was being used as a warehouse for a local shoe brand. On the outside, the architecture reminds one of Metropole in Karachi.

For the pop-up, The Roadside collaborated with June Collective to re-activate the space. The exhibition was arranged in a way that the viewers were led to experience the building alongside the artwork. (June Collective is an artist-led initiative rooted in the idea that art making is developed through meaningful interactions and interventions.)

As one walked through the installations, one faced the textures, sounds and sights of the building. There was an instance at the exhibition where a wall had broken down. This provided a stark juxtaposition to the names of the artists written in a straight line.

One of the artists, Nisha Hasan, used powder copies and acetones to draw on the walls and transfer family photos onto it. The windows included jaalis — a traditional feature of South Asian architecture. The jaalis (lattice) let in light yet maintain the privacy of those inside the building. In Nepal, the Newari architecture at the Kathmandu Durbar Square had jaalis so that the invaders would not see the women inside. In my village in Sargodha, my ancestral home of 150 years, has similar jaalis.

Nisha Hasan used powder copies and acetones to draw on the walls of the building itself and transfer family photos onto the surface. The windows included jaalis — a traditional feature of South Asian architecture.

Mohsin Shafi’s video was projected on the uneven cement floor. It benefitted from the uneven relief that rose and created a topography for the black and white projection to rest on. A sound installation by Ayaz Jokhio and Zainub J Khawaja reminded one of the lack of light on the farthest corner of the building because it accosted one with speakers that were hard to identify. This was very similar yet in contrast to the experience of another installation at the pop-up by MALIK, a local DJ, where a soundscape had been projected above the building’s unused open bathroom. The building came alive through the show.

The Roadside continues to activate space in an international context as well. Aun Raza showed his international travel photography in Pakistan.

Some of the art works were exhibited in Konya, Turkey. The Roadside showcased the work at a shop adjacent to the Mevlana Museum, i.e. the mausoleum of Rumi. There was a small LED at the exhibition in Lahore that showcased raw footage of the exhibition in Turkey. The footage showed a rainy day in Konya with hints of the shop that sells souvenirs and handicrafts, very similar to the cloud cover in Liberty Market, Lahore, that day. I was intrigued by the cross-national collaboration because it reminded Lahore of the world beyond its borders.

Considering that due to visa restrictions leaving Pakistan to see other countries is a privilege, the medium of film and sharing our lives and artwork across continents questions borders and spatiality. The exhibition up-ended the idea that art could be restricted to a space or a country. It showed that creative collaborations across borders and countries are possible and can inform our art making and our thought. To quote from the press release for Allomorphs of an Antecedent, there is “a relationship between memory and performance that the exhibit seeks to leave the viewer with. Viewers are left with the memories of this family-owned building, of the several movements and sounds that seek to re-inhabit and reinvigorate a space that is situated in the bustling Liberty Market. There are two-dimensional soundscapes and sculptural pieces that remind us of the building in which they rest, and also pay homage to the ephemerality of the works, of memories and of the ways in which we inhabit spaces.”

The exhibition invites also carried disclaimers cautioning viewers to “not come if loadshedding puts you off,” and to “come… if there is LOVE and (we) yearn for it to grow.” The show reminded the visitors that “...the space is not (ours).”

In an essay titled Against Interpretations, Susan Sontag said that sometimes the viewer takes up too much space, which maybe they are not supposed to. Interpretation leads us to take the sensory experience of art for granted. This exhibition focused on the sensorial, the sensual, the metaphysical experience of artworks by contemporary Pakistani artists in an abandoned building.

The writer is an artist and educator