Art activist, writer, curator and currently the Executive Director of Lahore Biennale Foundation is in the profile of February 2020 issue of Art Now P
Art activist, writer, curator and currently the Executive Director of Lahore Biennale Foundation is in the profile of February 2020 issue of Art Now Pakistan.
Qudsia Rahim completed her Bachelors from National College of Arts and Masters from Alfred University. She majored in Glass Sculpture and right after her Masters she started her career in art academia. She began teaching at Alfred University and also served at NCA as an Assistant Professor as well as serving as curator of its Zahoor Ul Akhlaque Gallery. She has independently conducted noteworthy research driven exhibitions that offered important original insights including Stet, a contemporary art exhibition at the Lahore Literary Festival 2014.
She has a heavy portfolio of being a part of many art events and and solely conducting many art exhibitions. She is one of the driving forces behind the Lahore Biennale Foundation and setting up amazing biennales; LB01 and LB02. Rahim oversees academic programs as well which aims to bridge the gap between art and society and also working on literacy awareness programs.
Lahore Biennale Foundation was set up in 2013. Its a non-for-profit-organization. Being the Executive Director of LBF, Rahim aims to take art to the public sphere, reaching the general public and bring art out of the walls of galleries and institutes.
The veteran artist and curator served the art community with her excellent skills that helped explore the literal meaning of a biennale. From LB01 to the recent LB02, she promoted art not from region to region but worldwide. The venue selection in LB02 is one of the examples of Rahim’s dedication towards activating art at every corner. The abandoned historic places in lahore became the focus of LBF and let the general audience look at these sites and venues as their own and embrace their culture and heritage; which are as colorful as art is.
Art is a visual representation of thoughts and ideas but for Rahim art is something to enjoy with and art should be used as platform that helps scrub away the gap through dialogue and experimentation.
She doesnt believe that art is limited to any region or country but she aims to make Lahore Biennale Foundation strong and welcoming enough that could allow more and more artists to participate in Lahore Biennale and art from every corner of the world could be brought to Pakistan to witness the growth of Pakistani artist and to enjoy, experience and learn from art.
With an enthusiastic team, Rahim feels empowered that she has a team of intelligent and hardworking people. Its not just the biennale time when Rahim is active and working on different sites for art cause, but she remains active during the whole year for different collaboration, discursive talks, speeches, residencies etc. Her art calendar is all booked and marked with different art activities that she keeps planning to engage everybody in art and invite people to experience the peace that art provides.
She firmly believes that biennales are important for Pakistan and to educate the general public about art is more important so they can own their culture and art. Biennales play a vital role in educating a society whereas such venues and spaces should be selected that has a history of art but abandoned.
Considering the need of art for the society, the themes are projection of social concerns in the most understandable ways possible through art to bring awareness and education to the public. Rahim’s focus being bringing art at one platform and making biennales one of the most exciting art events for the public is placing and highlighted Lahore Biennale editions on the art world map just after the second iteration of Lahore Biennale. Rahim surely played a pivotal role in taking LBF where it is today and LB not only exciting for artists and art communities but for the world.
COMMENTS