Travels Mundane & Surreal: The Art Of Esther Rahim

Never much lionized in the annals of mainstream Pakistani art, Esther Rahim was nevertheless a painter of no small significance. Also known as Esmet, she was the wife of J.A Rahim the well-known civil servant, diplomat, politician and founding member of the Pakistan Peoples Party.

Esmet Rahim was a pioneer of the Karachi Arts Council along with Zubaida Agha. She was also an enthusiastic patron of block printed textiles and her patronage contributed to their revival and survival in Karachi during the 1950s.

A friend of both Amrita Sher-Gil and Jamini Roy, Esther found her own voice and vision only towards the end of her artistic life. The resulting body of work remains of undisputed value and exceptional maturity. This collection of essays hopes to introduce the work of this remarkable woman artist to the audience she was denied during her lifetime.

Sikandar Rahim

Sikander Rahim, the son of Esther Rahim and of Jalaluddin Abdur Rahim of the Pakistan Foreign Service and the ICS, was born in 1939. He studied mathematics and economics at Cambridge University and has worked as an economist for the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, the Government of Pakistan (Economic Affairs Department and Planning Division) and the World Bank. He is now retired but sometimes teaches at the Lahore School of Economics.

Salima Hashmi

Professor Salima Hashmi taught at the National College of Arts, Lahore, for thirty years. She was also the Principal of the College for four years, and held the post of Professor of Fine Arts. She is a painter of repute whose works have been exhibited widely in Pakistan and in a number of international exhibitions. She has written extensively on arts and crafts and has curated exhibitions of contemporary art and traditional textile within Pakistan, as well as abroad. Co-founder of the Rohtas Gallery in Islamabad (estb. 1981) she established Rohtas 2 in Lahore in 2001. She is currently Dean, School of Visual Arts at the Beaconhouse National University, Lahore.

Nazish Ataullah

Naazish Ata-Ullah is a practicing artist and art educator. She is Associate Professor and Head of Printmaking in the Department of Fine Arts at the National College of Arts, where she has been teaching since 1985. Her research interests span the development and progress of art education from the nineteenth century to the present day. She has exhibited her work in Pakistan and internationally. Currently she is writing and lecturing on contemporary art and is undertaking curatorial projects.