Language Series

In this series, Rashid builds on the notion of language being a record of cultural history and juxtaposes this idea with the history of visual representation. For this series, an extensive pictorial archive of all kinds of text that existed in the city of Lahore-in the form of advertisement, wall chalking, political banners and posters etc. (in 2010-11) has been built. These images, though primarily of the Urdu script but in most cases Urdu transliterations of English words (a legacy of colonialism)- are composed to make collage-like works that deal with various ways of visual representation / image making. Rana defines his use of references pertaining to the history of art as, ‘Part admiration, part telling my own story’.