The importance of staying quiet
In 2014, The importance of staying quiet was exhibited in Hong Kong as an attempt to acknowledge a minimal vocabulary within Pakistani art. Conceived by Saira Ansari and Umer Butt, the presentation brought together works spanning six decades, between the 1950s and 2010s, and included Anwar Jalal Shemza (1928–1985), Zahoor ul Akhlaq (1941–1999), Lala Rukh (1948–2017), Rashid Rana (b. 1968), Hamra Abbas (b. 1976), Sara Salman (b. 1978), Ali Kazim (b. 1979), Ayesha Jatoi (b. 1979), Fahd Burki (b. 1981), and Iqra Tanveer (b. 1983).
Rather than showing signature works often associated with these artists – most of whom are not minimalists – the exhibition highlighted moments where they pared form and image down to their most distilled elements. The proposition was that minimal vocabularies in Pakistan are not anomalies or exceptions, but part of a more layered understanding of artistic abstraction in the region.
A decade later, The importance of staying quiet returns as a year-long dialogic exchange between Butt and Ansari and will include a series of presentations shaped through discursive encounters. This time, the programme will examine the development of practices that have deliberately engaged minimal or abstract strategies. This exercise is not only about tracing a lineage of abstraction, but about sustaining a way of looking that requires deeper reading and slower appreciation.
4. Fahd Burki II.a
April 18 – May 09, 2026
Originally conceived as a two-part exploration – Fahd Burki I and Fahd Burki II – the project has been rearticulated to allow for a more gradual unfolding.
Fahd Burki II.a, the fourth exhibition in The importance of staying quiet, operates as a passage within this trajectory. Extending the dialogue initiated through painting in Fahd Burki I, this presentation assembles works on paper, canvas, and wood, pulling through the two-dimensional language and foreshadowing its shift toward the three-dimensional.
While the spatial studies of the paintings were anchored in amorphous, inanimate volume and depth, the works on display here turn toward contour, elevation, and depressions, explored through both actual and implied relief. From the surface outward, the edges crawl, fold around the frame, and consolidate into a single wooden form that anchors the centre of the presentation. The remaining tonally minimal, monochromatic works hold the space in a light yet concentrated tension.
The image remains void of organic reference, yet a monolithic presence begins to assert itself.
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The final presentation in the series, Fahd Burki II.b, opening May 16, will move fully into the three-dimensional.
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About the artist
Fahd Burki (b. 1981, Lahore, Pakistan / Lives and works in Pakistan) graduated from the National College of Arts, Lahore and received a Postgraduate Diploma from the Royal Academy of Arts, London.
Selected exhibitions : Old Bone, THE BARRACKS Art Museum, Lahore, Pakistan / daydreams, Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai, UAE, / Wheredoiendandyoubegin - On Secularity, 9th Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art Gothenberg, Sweden / Folds of Belonging, Brisbane / Social Calligraphies, Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland / 11th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, South Korea / The Missing One, OCA, Oslo, Norway / Dhaka Art Summit, Dhaka, Bangladesh / Carré d’Art - musée d’art contemporain de Nîmes, Nîmes, France.