Mussarat Mirza

A sense of place

Construction of Lansdowne Bridge, Sukkur. 1885-1889. Cambridge University Library, Special Collections

“ Reviewing colonial archives of Sukkur, one notices how they cover the significant subject, the ‘picturesque’ view. In a similar vein, painters often paint landmarks, and those landmarks usually remain. As a viewer, you can experience them as identifiers of place. But in Mirza’s work…she does not focus on monumental sites. Often it may be that the particular world in her image no longer exists…”

From the album of Mary Emma Walter (c. mid-19th century). Minaret, burial place of 16th century Mughal governor, scholar-saint: Mir Masoom Shah. | India Office Private Papers MSS Eur B265/1/British Library

“ Sindh’s mud architecture—this indigenous knowledge form—often appears in her art. We may sense it in the rendering of a thick courtyard wall and its remarkable patina; or the dome of a wayside shrine; a roof parapet with small window-like openings; here, in the artist’s rendering of adobe homes, her shaded passage ways. There is a sense of someone looking, as though looking out from a place within. Her works seems to witness the passing of this [mittiyali] life-world… In some ways, Mirza’s philosophy of painting feels consistent with the material philosophy of the region’s earthen architecture.”

Dr. Anila Naeem, NED University, Karachi

Island shrine of Hazrat Khwaja Khizr, between Rohri and Sukkur. Coloured lithograph based on sketch by Captain Sir Keith A. Jackson (1838).

Map of Sindh province, Pakistan. (Designed by Sohail Zuberi for artist’s monograph).

Self-portrait, c. 1960s

A sense of time

“ An insight inaugurates our archival process: the image of a young woman in her early twenties, preparing canvases at home in a small alcove-turned-studio. Painting with intensity in an environment that does not in any way reference art. It is the late 1960s. This early handling of materials, works packed and transported, large-scale canvases in carriage, by train, from Sukkur to the metropolitan centres of Pakistan. This manual image resonates: Mirza’s work travelled. ”

First exhibition in Karachi, Arts Council (Khi) 1970

Exhibition at Intercontinental Hotel, Rawalpindi, 1969

Mirza with family members and artist Sadequain (second from right), 1970.

“ …Her oeuvre literally spans the history of art infrastructure in Pakistan. From early ‘arts councils’ to the first independent galleries, to canon-setting national organisations (PNCA, Idara Saqafat-e-Pakistan), and further afield, to the inception of regional platforms in Dhaka, New Delhi, in East Asia, new postcolonial alignments at the heart of the modern here, as exhibitory frames—for all of this Mirza’s work was source material. Painting of her own accord, slowly, sometimes a few works a year, sometimes many more, her art thus became of the world.”

Maha Malik, Freelance Writer, Karachi

Exhibition Brochure, 1969

This web-page is imagined as a site for community-based research. Archival insights may be shared at mussaratmirza.art@gmail.com

Pioneering art faculty with students, University of Sindh at Jamshoro, 1977.
Mirza (seated second from left) with A.R. Nagori and Ali Nawaz Phulphoto (seated fourth and fifth, respectively).

Wall text excerpt: Retrospective at KOEL Gallery, Karachi (2021)

Artist portrait (2021)