ISLAMABAD: It is individuals and organisations like Foundation Art Divvy who keep the cultural scene of Pakistan alive. Your organization has done a fantastic job. The three women who contributed to this event are truly outstanding Shafqat Mahmood, the Federal Minister for Education and Culture said this while speaking as the chief guest.
He said, on Foundation Art Divvy’s Five-Year Anniversary, we would like to honour our supporters and celebrate the catalogue of the inaugural Pavilion of Pakistan “Manora Field Notes: Naiza Khan” at the Venice Biennale 2019, curated by Zahra Khan and presented by the Pakistan National Council of the Arts & Foundation Art Divvy. The catalogue was published by Mousse Publishing and Foundation Art Divvy in 2019, and it was originally launched in 2019 at the Pakistan High Commission in London.
The catalogue celebration and talk with Foundation Art Divvy Creative Director Zahra Khan and artist Naiza Khan was followed by a film on Foundation Art Divvy. The guest of honour was Minister of Culture & Heritage Mr. Shafqat Mahmood. Several Ambassadors and senior bureaucrats were in attendance, as well as esteemed artists and art enthusiasts.
The catalogue of Manora Field Notes, the inaugural Pavilion of Pakistan, documents the Pavilion through richly printed photographs of the multimedia installations as well as images of archival material and the artistic production process. In addition to a statement by curator Zahra Khan, the catalogue includes reflections by leading scholars Iftikhar Dadi, Aamir R. Mufti and Emilia Terracciano, along with an insightful text by Naiza Khan on her creative process that offers depth to our understanding of the complex exhibition.
Foundation Art Divvy provides a platform at an institutional level, locally and internationally to the arts from Pakistan. In addition to an annual large scale institutional art exhibition: Pakistan’s pavilion to the Venice Biennale in 2019; collaterals to the Lahore Biennale: Sagar Theatre on Queen’s Road (2020) and I, too, am a part of this history (2018); and Two Wings To Fly, Not One: Aisha Khalid & Imran Qureshi (2017); and a series of exhibitions at Rossi & Rossi Gallery in London, its latest venture has been Divvy Film Festival, celebrating independent Pakistani cinema which recently completed its second iteration, as well as Art Divvy Conversations, a series of insta-live interviews with artists and filmmakers across South Asia.
