feed(/)me: Unpacking Art Content on Social Media
- The Aleph Review
- Sep 21
- 6 min read
Aaima Wasif
On Ghazala Raees’s curatorial endeavour, feed(/)me, a group show held at HAAM Gallery in Lahore from 30 August–19 September, exploring how artists use social media.
Social media plays a significant role in how we construct, practice and reinvent our identity. In this context, our digital feeds serve as a canvas, where crafting and managing it through careful thought, consideration and imagination become intentional acts of creative expression.
feed(/)me, a brainchild of curator Ghazala Raees, delved into this phenomenon by exploring how artists use social media. Focusing specifically on art content on Instagram, it examined how artistic practices are transforming online. The show featured 13 artists who created work inspired by the content on their own Instagram feeds, and was exhibited at HAAM Gallery.
The exhibition offered an eclectic experience, unpacking multiple themes from exploring internal turmoil and the commodification of art, to reflecting on the fugitive nature of our digital feed and the primacy of creative process over the final product. Minaa Mohsin’s iterative series, ‘12 Sarkari Gamlay’, caught the eye immediately upon entering the gallery. It featured a collection of nearly identical yellow flower pots against a muted background, each with only subtle differences in form. The repetitive nature of the series alluded to the experience of scrolling through a saturated social media feed, creating a dialogue on themes of reproduction and recognition in contemporary visual culture.
Similarly, Nakhshab Rehman found inspiration in the mundane, bringing a touch of surrealism to everyday objects. His process videos featured a chappal flying through the sky, a banana floating in the mountains and bales of leaves superimposed on a toilet paper roll. The work was as postmodern as it gets, and the purpose was not to convey some singular, esoteric meaning, but rather to underscore the creative process itself. This playful subversion revealed why many artists post process videos—they are a way of showcasing skill and establishing legitimacy.
The exploration of legitimacy was further extended in the works of Vania Mazhar and Sana Saeed, who investigated how artists and audiences engage with art in the digital age. Mazhar’s oil paintings depicted a contemporary paradox: people at art exhibitions perusing physical artworks through their phones to record and share their experiences on social media. This practice of photographing and posting art, in turn, produces a new, informal yet intimate dimension to its consumption. Similarly, Sana Saeed’s photograph series challenged traditional notions of art by featuring the artist as the subject, captioned with descriptions of paintings that were notably absent or obscured. By placing herself at the centre of the frame, Saeed redirected attention from the physical art piece to herself. This shift was a commentary on online personas, highlighting how it has almost become a necessity for artists to act as brands and strive for online recognition in order to stay relevant.
The pressure artists face to constantly cater to the algorithm and compete for visibility, not just with others, but with their own digital presence, was explored in Aleezah Qayyum’s riveting 72”x72” abstract piece accompanied by Hassam Anwars’s audio, both titled ‘Sediments’. The works possessed an unsettling, visceral quality that served as a depiction of the overwhelming flow of images on social media. Qayyum contrasted this mighty piece with a phone size mixed-media work titled ‘The Grid’; this dramatic difference in scale reflected how physical artworks originally meant to be viewed life-size are often flattened and decontextualised when reduced to a thumbnail on social media. Thus the act of viewing a painting on a grid may compromise its physicality and nuance, as it becomes just another image in a continuous digital stream.
Watercolour compositions by Faraz Aamer Khan were self-contained pieces, each representing a separate Instagram post. His pieces such as ‘I have nothing’ and ‘Meagre offerings’ embodied a sense of melancholy that echoed the fragmented character of Qayyum’s work. This fleeting, isolated quality stood in stark contrast to the relentless and layered digital landscape, aptly represented in Sohail Zuberi’s lenticular print, which documented his extensive collection of visuals from Karachi. As viewers moved, different images appeared on the print, mirroring the continuous scroll of a digital stream where pictures briefly flash before being replaced.
Beyond the passive experience of scrolling, the exhibition also explored the interactive aspects of social media. This was exemplified by Safwan Subzwari’s brick series titled ‘Please Like Me’. Each brick featured a miniature print of one of Subzwari’s artworks on the surface, along with a heart stamp, which invited viewers to take part. When a viewer interacted by stamping the artwork, it gave a tingling of satisfaction, quite similar to getting a ‘like’ or ‘liking’ a post on social media.
The exhibition’s nuanced exploration of digital practice was further highlighted through two contrasting approaches to the feed itself. While Ayaz Jokhio’s detailed still-life captured his Instagram feed on a cell phone screen with incredible precision, Hania Batool’s work embraced the opposite: she reclaimed physical space and spontaneity. Her performance-based practices on Instagram reflected a belief that the true essence of art is in the dynamic act of creation (verb), not the finished product (noun). For this exhibition, she created all three of her pieces live in the gallery, with each one being a tangible, improvised expression.
The exhibition also delved into exploring the dynamics of public and personal on social media. Salar Marri’s ‘Observations on Hamad Butt’ were derived from the renewed interest in the life and practice of late British artist Hamad Butt after a retrospective exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery in London was recently dedicated to him. The painting alone evoked a complex mix of comfort, vulnerability and ambiguity. However, the accompanying grid of photographs which comprised visuals and text, and almost resembled Instagram posts on a personal account, not only contextualised the adjacent painting in the artist’s personal narrative, but also offered insight into the emotional depth of Marri’s broader body of work—which often focuses on erasing the who, when and where of the subject.
Continuing the theme of personal and the public, Mohsin Shafi used fragments of texts to capture an artist struggling to consolidate himself in a world plagued with disaster, loss and injustice. In light of the recent floods, with videos and photographs of the havoc wreaked by climate change becoming ubiquitous on social media, the artist decided to take his project down just before the show’s opening. His response to the situation was to lay bare his inner world and pause through a spontaneous performance act just as the world paused for so many others.
The exhibition’s critique of how we consume and engage with difficult topics was further highlighted by Hoor Imad Sherpao’s ‘The Casual Battle’, which portrayed the simplification of the realities of war and politics through user-friendly Instagram aesthetics. Through an influencer-style self-portrait with a digital aesthetic and an AI generated reel, Sherpao transformed a backdrop of fiery destruction into something almost glamorous. This was further explored in an accompanying AI-generated video where the artist was seen standing face-to-face with Barack Obama in front of the Mona Lisa. The bizarre nature of this scenario was an implicit commentary on how conflicts, especially the recent Pakistan-India conflict, was represented and consumed online through memes and viral posts.
feed(/)me was a poignant exploration of social media as a dynamic, often paradoxical, space for art. The exhibition acknowledged the tensions artists face in the digital world, while simultaneously also looking at it as a legitimate platform for artistic creation. It both examined the ephemeral nature of online content, as well as the potential of social media to democratise artistic expression. Ultimately, feed(/)me suggested that the answer is not straightforward—rather it lies in the intentionality and engagement of both artists and their audiences.
All images of the artwork are courtesy of the author.
Aaima Wasif is a graduate of the Department of Cultural Studies at the National College of Arts, Lahore. She is currently working as a Teaching Assistant at NCA, and can be reached at aaimawasif14@gmail.com.
About the Curator: Ghazala Raees is a researcher and emerging curator working as a Lecturer in the Department of Cultural Studies, National College of Arts, Lahore. She received her Bachelors in Visual Communication Design from NCA and went on to study Critical Media and Cultural Studies at the School for Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), UK. Her practice explores the potential of exhibitions as mediums of expression, emphasising on the ideas of reading ‘exhibitions as artworks’.
Ghazala Raees was selected for the Curator’s Residency hosted by Vasl Artists Association in collaboration with British Council, as part of which she curated Creation in Translation [case study 01] (2024). Recently she co-curated Echoes of Lahore (2025), an exhibition derived from research on Mall Road, Lahore, conducted with students of the Cultural Studies Department, NCA. She worked with June Collective to curate consolidated paces (2023) at Haam Gallery.
Raees was assistant curator for Allomorphs of an Antecedent, a site-specific exhibition by The Roadside (2023) and was on the curatorial team for Be(Coming) The Museum, exhibited at Lahore Museum (2023). She was a co-curator for Supavenezia exhibited at AplusA Gallery, Venice (2022). Under The Citizens Archive of Pakistan, she conceptualised and executed Maazi ki Saa’aatain, a collateral exhibition to LB02 at the National History Museum (2020).
She was awarded a scholarship by NCA to pursue a summer programme in curatorial practice at the School for Curatorial Studies in Venice. Raees is a PUAN alumni for the International Visitors Leadership Program (IVLP).
Comments