If You Have A Garden In Your Library

‘If You Have A Garden In Your Library”- I is the title of a show opening at AAN Gandhara Art Space on 11th April 2019. The point of departure for the show was a paragraph by Umberto Eco.

“The kind of library is made for me. I can decide to pass a whole day there in bliss: I read the papers, take the books down to the bar, then I go to look for some more. I make my discoveries, having gone into work on say British Empiricism; I start to follow commentaries on Aristotle instead. On getting the floor wrong, I find myself in an area, I hadn’t thought to enter, on medicine, but then I suddenly find works on Galen and hence complete with philosophical references. In this sense the library becomes an adventure.”
– Umberto Eco

An essay by Umberto Eco titled “Di Bibliotheca” (The Library) which was read at a conference held in March 1981 on the 25th Anniversary of Bibliotheca Comunale in Milano at Palazzo Sormani. It was subsequently published in Quaderni di Palazzo Sormani in 1981

Saba Khan, Wardha Shabbir, Mehreen Zuberi and Mohsin Shai will be exhibiting in the first show. This exhibition is part of a two part series and Part II will follow this exhibition. 

The exhibition is curated by Malika Abbas with Amna Naqvi serving as a curatorial advisor.