The Thing Is...
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An LBF Programme on Expanding Curatorial Proficiency
In a moment when curatorial practice demands interdisciplinary fluency and imagining new constellations to advance local discourse, The Lahore Biennale Foundation’s training and development program ‘The Thing Is: Expanding Curatorial Proficiency’—led by LBF Director Qudsia Rahim and independent curator and professor of art history Maliha Noorani—served as a vital intervention. Running from Fall 2025, with a series of special exhibits and public programming commencing in Spring 2026, this initiative facilitated emerging curatorial voices and its professional practice within Pakistan.
A cohort of five Curatorial Fellows were afforded the opportunity to expand their practices through a series of seminars and craft workshops that situated the field historically and studied strategies for intersectional and thoughtful approaches to connecting art and community.
The inaugural cohort of Curatorial Fellows formed a diverse group of practitioners, who trained to curate beyond the gallery walls, to claim curating as an act of courage and to become soft provocateurs, presenting fresh contexts in response to the environments they inhabit, in Pakistan and beyond.
'The Thing Is: Expanding Curatorial Proficiency' ran with the support of the British Council, Pakistan. Below are the project details of each of the Fellows, shared courtesy of the programme, along with some snippets of the individual exhibitions.
Project Title: Where Soft Blades Meet Curator: Amra Khan Location: COLABS Gulberg Participating Artists: Abdul Hadi; Abdullah Qureshi; Ahsan Masood; Chandni Jee; Fatima Faisal Qureshi; Haider Ali Jan; Izik Direction; Nad E Ali; Sophia-Layla; Syed Mehar Ali; Waleed Zafar
Curatorial Premise: The exhibition questions performative notions of masculinity and queerness within rituals of grooming, devotion, and becoming. Rooted in the socio-cultural makings of Pakistaniat, the project reflects on the barbershop as a contested site where masculinities, ritual, and spirituality collide
Through objects, images, sounds, materials, and gestures, practitioners respond to questions of intimacy, ritual, and memory. As a site of negotiation, the exhibition reimagines who this ‘male space’ holds, and whom it excludes. The exhibition asks what it means to be seen, touched, or transformed and how do such rituals carry traces of the unseen, the feminine, the queer? Through these explorations, ‘Where Soft Blades Meet’, will facilitate the makings of a sacred site which interrogates masculinity, by envisioning queer possibilities within.
Project Title: In Other Words
Location: ZQ Gallery
Participating Artists: Akram Dost Baloch; Fayaz Baloch; Manoj Kumar; Mir Dostak; Mir Sultan Jailani; Muzahir Zaidi; Sabia Hayat; Sidra Khawaja; Saud Baloch
Curatorial Premise:
‘In Other Words’ brings together the work of eight artists whose practices are shaped by ways of knowing that are not always written or spoken. The show is concerned with how knowledge travels from the margins into visibility, particularly with attention to (de)framing stillness, and the gentle struggle of passivity, allowing practices to speak through material. ‘In Other Words’ aims to hold a space where viewers can slow down and experience how knowledge moves quietly: through land, through memory, through gestures, through sound and through storytelling.
By situating this as a line of inquiry, it approaches mediated seeing as something embodied, lived, and practiced rather than something fixed. It proposes staying and listening as methods, care as a curatorial gesture, and presence as a form of understanding. The show includes voices from different regions whose practices engage with questions of memory, land, and transmission, connected by a shared interest in knowledge-in-practice that serves as the guiding thread for it.
Project Title: Echo of the Past
Location: Mubarak Haveli, Naqsh Art Complex
Participating Artists: Abdul Rehman; Ghafar Mohiu Din; Majid Ghaffor; Muhammad Faheem Tufail; Wajahit Ali; Zhenyu Wang
Curatorial Premise:
The past does not sit quietly behind us—it breathes through clay, trembles in pattern, flickers in light, and regenerates through code. ‘Echo of the Past’ gathers six artists whose works do not simply reference Islamic visual traditions, they listen to them, question them, and allow them to transform in the present. ‘Echo of the Past’ does not mourn what has been lost—instead, it listens for resonance between earth and body, craft and code, devotion and critique. Here, the past is not a fixed inheritance, it is a living frequency repeating, refracting and returning, inviting us to stand within its pattern and recognise ourselves as part of its unfolding.
Project Title: rese(e)ding worlds: seeds as living archives
Location: Mubarak Haveli, Naqsh Art Complex
Artists: Marwa Arsanios; Danish Gahlot; Karim Ahmed Khan; Jumana Manna; Inaam Zafar
Curatorial Premise:
‘rese(e)ding worlds: seeds as living archives’ is an exhibition developed through conversations with seed savers, activists, and artists working across ecological and horticultural practices in Pakistan. It considers seeds as cultural heritage and ecological memory, asking what histories, knowledge, and relationships are erased when seed is separated from the communities that have nurtured it under extractive agricultural systems.
Project Title: Mughalnama
Location: The Peepul Press
Participating Artists: Natasha Malik; Faraz Aamer Khan; Fazal Rizvi; Veera Rustomji; Murad Khan Mumtaz; Rakae Jamil
Curatorial Premise:
‘Mughalnama’ is an exhibition that reflects on the meaning of the term “Mughal” and questions how it might be re-imagined beyond fixed histories. It considers the fluid geographies, plural identities, and layered cultural exchanges that shaped the Mughal period, proposing the term as a site of ongoing negotiation rather than a singular historical narrative.
The creative practitioners in this display demonstrate how this period in history can transcend classification. Art, empire, dynasty and cultural overlaps are some of the themes in these explorations that show the fluid nature of what can be called Mughal, and how this dynasty extended beyond the geographical in its heavy engagement with indigenous and neighbouring cultures. In an exhibit that invites slow looking, these studies explore this marked epoch and create space to supplement our understanding about the pluralities that existed during the Mughal dynasty.
Photo Credits and Descriptions:
Amra Khan - Where Soft Blades Meet: Courtesy: Colabs Creative Collection and Amra Khan on Instagram, featuring a selection of works in situ
Durrie Baloch - In Other Words:
Courtesy: Catalogue, featuring (clockwise from Top Left) works by Manoj Kumar, Sidra Khawaja, Fayyaz Baloch and Muzahir Zaidi
Ghafar Mohiu Din - Echo of the Past:
Courtesy: Catalogue; featuring (L to R) works by Muhammad Faheem Tufail and Abdul Rehman
Natalie Stuart - rese(e)ding worlds:
Courtesy: Catalogue; featuring (clockwise from Top Left) works by Marwa Arsanios, Inaam Zafar, Danish Gahlot and Karim Ahmed Khan
Saher Sohail - Mughalnama:
Courtesy: Catalogue; featuring (L to R) process documentation of works by Murad Khan Mumtaz and Faraz Aamer Khan
About the Project Lead:
Maliha Noorani is an independent curator and a professor of Art Theory and History at the National College of Arts, Lahore. After completing her BFA from NCA, she read Art History at SOAS University of London and Yale University. She was the Norma Jean Calderwood Curatorial Fellow at the Harvard University Art Museums, where she curated Company to Crown: Perceptions and Reactions in British India and Atul Bhalla’s photographic series ‘I Was Not Waving But Drowning’.
She works closely with museums and cultural institutions; she worked with the Lahore Museum and the Taxila Museum as a UNESCO curatorial specialist (2018–2022). Her recent projects include Taxila Museum’s first special exhibition, ‘Gandhara: Routes and Roots’ (2022), and ‘Crafting Histories’ (2023). She is currently working with the Lahore Biennale Foundation on ‘The Thing Is: Expanding Curatorial Proficiency’ and sits on the Indus Conclave committee as Head of Arts Programming.
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