Lala Rukh: Selected Works

Overview

Lala Rukh’s art practice is intertwined with her lifelong commitments to teaching, activism and the classical music of South Asia, which span the past fifty years and include her founding and directing MA Honours in Visual Arts at Lahore’s National College of Arts; and co-founding The All Pakistan Music Conference (1960), Women’s Action Forum (1981) and Vasl Artists’ Trust (2000).

In Sigiriya (1993), three serigraph prints depict the ancient city’s water gardens at different times of day, exploring transference and duration through evolving gradients of colour and tone. Indicative of her economy of form and interest in line as perceptual threshold, Hieroglyphics IV and V (2006–08) draw on the artist’s exposure to calligraphy and music from an early age. Here, the square, angled qat, which determines the size and form of calligraphic writing, is used to visualise the matra, or beat, that constitutes the fixed rhythmic patterns of South Asian raaga – an exploration of new units of measure and structural progression that underlie both systems.