For many, the most irritating challenge is tying laces in perfect accord on both shoes in a pair. When one fails to do so, one foot seems to be in a tight grip while the other is held a bit loosely. Only on very rare and lucky mornings does one manage to achieve the desired symmetry. Otherwise the shoe issue keeps stirring his sole/soul.

One can also notice the existence of shoes in other ways. In art for instance: Vincent van Gogh painted a number of still-lifes representing peasants’ old boots. Worn out, dirty and deformed, these echoed the social condition of their users. There are a few other works dealing with this accessory. Several artists have also collaborated with shoe designers to produce unique, extraordinary and exciting footwear.

On January 30 one had another experience of shoes as one witnessed the work of 20 artists, created in connection with a shoe factory’s product, premises, material, facility and labour. This project, The Factory, was curated by Rameesha Azeem and supported by Vasl Artists’ Association. It remained open to the public till February 7.

Not an everyday happening, it generated several points to ponder, including the relationship between art and industry; aesthetics and commodification; individual expression and mass manufacturing; and different understandings of function – as well as of art and life (transporting us to another Factory, the studio of Andy Warhol, who diminished the boundary between a handmade object and a mechanically reproduced one). Artists responded to these concerns and a few others in their works installed at several locations of the factory.

Being surrounded by huge production halls, immense work spaces, abundant raw material, machinery and manpower, one realises the challenge as well as stimuli these offer to an artist; especially for those accustomed to working on a small scale, in a manageable studio and with familiar mediums and tools. Participants of this project revealed diverse approaches; some changed their medium but not the imagery (Abid Aslam). For some, their regular practice evolved at a new setting/ context (Suleman Khilji, Suleman Faisal). A few reacted to the place through the nature of objects manufactured there, and the relationship between the Nature and man-made articles. It was a commendable initiative providing opportunity, space and inspiration for the artists to come out of the box and think differently.

“Out of the box” in reference to a shoe factory, logically, is about the shoe box. We all love to collect and have played with shoe boxes in our childhood. Mahbub Jokhio, in his Art for All – the most impressive work on display – dealt with the box. (It referred to Warhol’s Brillo Boxes, too). Jokhio created a line of empty shoe boxes printed with text that substitutes, compares and combines contemporary art with footwear. The artist, using the idiom of advertisement, described the label Contemporary Art, its ingredients, qualities; and its fabrication for “the demands of postmodernity”. It delineated its components in a chart that included Critical Thinking, Conceptual Thinking, Contemporary Discourse, Postmodern Critique, Shock Value and Political Commentary.

In an ironic manner, Mahbub Jokhio blended a pair of shoes and an outcome of contemporary art, treating them to an absolute/ desirable abstraction (no footwear in the box, nor a piece of contemporary art). The description on the box, mainly in Urdu, consisted of a diction that marries art writing with the classification of industrial goods. However, one feels that the artist introduced some clues, which probably were not needed, like his company name, MJ Manufacturers PVT LTD, at a commercial area in “Mahboobabad”. This type of entry transports the fiction into fantasy, hence unbelievable.

Being there and surrounded by huge production halls, immense work spaces, abundant raw material, machinery and manpower, one realises the challenge as well as the stimuli these offer to an artist; especially for those working on small scale, in a manageable studio and with familiar mediums and tools. Participants of this project used diverse approaches to present their work.

A powerful and convincing piece of fiction was produced by Ayaz Jokhio; a structure of two-stringed sneakers, moving as if jogging, with a mechanical device. No length was covered, not even “the distance of two feet” as the title suggests. The work indicates the futility of upward mobility, progress, struggle or reaching to another human being. In all our efforts, we are stuck to our circumstances, limitations and abilities. The ghost feet created by Ayaz Jokhio, are perpetually moving but arriving nowhere. This is the story of our private, political and national history.

Shoes by Ayaz Jokhio were like any other we come across in a shop, and same as Saba Khan’s three pairs of shoes, stored in a glass cabinet. These pieces did not look different from factory productions. After being created by an artist, the fine line between an artist and a machine was evoked. An artwork also has a function other than mere aesthetic/ decorative, because shoes fabricated by Khan were worn by the participants of “Pak Khawateen Painting Club” for their LB 2020 work.

Inside the expanse of the shoe factory, one noted the existence of an assembly line, scale, available stuff/ help caused multiple reactions. Hassan Mujtaba accumulated barrels and erected a passageway, leading from a tower of chemicals containers to another. After the initial awe, the experience waned. His collection of lit chandeliers suspended in a dysfunctional and dark hall of the factory, on the other hand, seemed magical and transcended the actual and ordinary space.

In Faizan Naveed’s work too, one recognised the measure of physical area and the extent of an artist’s imagination. In one installation, an uprooted tree hangs upside down, from its roots to its branches and leaves. It appeared to be as strong and stringing as the corpse of a freshly scarified animal. It alluded to the haunting power and dispossession scenario – of a dark and desolate factory hall frequented by factory workers.

Some of the participants in The Factory project seemed to be overwhelmed by the tools, technologies and the diversity of stuff. A few managed, however, to continue in their preferred – tested and tried – pictorial language. Mohsin Shafi installed 14 TV monitors, on walls of a work place in varying heights; each playing 3-minute segments of movies from ’60s onwards with footage of feet and footwear in different situations. This remarkable work (It’s Showtime, Get Your Popcorn Ready), compelled a visitor to perceive cinema from a different perspective, and read the social, sexual and hierarchical connotations attached to the shoe in our cultural imagination. In its structure, the work reminded one of Shafi’s single-channel video Tasbeeh from 2011, which consisted of screenshots/ stills from 99 TV channels played in a loop along with the sound.

The fetishes for both feet and footwear suspected in Shafi’s work are understandable because anyone appreciating our shoes is in a way admiring our feet because there is hardly a vacuum between the flesh and what is worn. In case of a leather sandal, boot etc, the human skin perpetually rubs against the hide of a dead animal. Ali Baba captured that imperceptible gap, by casting the space between the foot and the shoe in latex (Space in Between). This delicate layer, resembling both the human body and the commercial product, is a poetic reference to what is between the lines, what is often missed, trampled and ignored, yet exists.

Focus on the subtle reality was observed in Rabeya Jalil and Rabeeha Adnan’s work mapping the inner architecture of a container. Lines of green light define the inside of a huge structure. Besides this, the artists’ duo opened up the anatomy of an art practice: the language of art. In their installation on the factory wall, they put a long text, instructions, that mimicked the advice a student often gets from the tutors. Ironic, intriguing and engaging, the presence of this immaculately fixed matter in the context of a shoe factory compelled one to find links/ reasons. A pedantic connection could be in the word ‘footage’ from the 3rd section of the instructions; but the work can also be considered a manual to decipher art and life.

By employing language, Dua Abbas also opted for another format. Instead of constructing an ‘object’ in a conventional sense, Abbas produced a small booklet, a fable about a labourer in a nameless shoe factory who lost one of his feet. In the end he was given the missing limb by some “miracle worker”. The story, reverberating between body loss to economic deprivation, is a narrative for our times. In addition to that, the title of Dua Abbas’s publication – available at the premises – Miracle at the Assembly Line can be a description of the products of the Chawla Footwear factory.

The writer is an art critic based in Lahore.