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Two Defining Voices of Modern Pakistani Art Reunite in London
The work of husband and wife Zahoor ul Akhlaq and Sheherezade Alam is on view in a selling exhibition in London, where their love story began nearly 60 years ago.
A mong the most influential figures in modern Pakistani art, Zahoor ul Akhlaq and Sheherezade Alam each transformed the field in which they worked. Though united in life as partners, their artistic practices developed along distinct trajectories. Akhlaq revolutionised the language of contemporary painting by forging a dialogue between South Asian visual traditions and international modernism, while Alam preserved and reimagined the shapes and methods behind the age-old craft of ceramic. Their works were rarely exhibited in direct dialogue, making this exhibition a significant reunion. Nearly sixty years after they first met in London in the summer of 1968, their practices are brought together in the city where their shared story began.
"The basic components of a painting are colour, line, dimension, balance, and synthesis. They, put together, create a feeling, an effect. There are no words to describe this feeling or effect… The word is finite; the image, infinite… I am not entirely responsible for what I have put on view. I share this responsibility with all the poets, musicians, sculptors, writers, artists… who have, over the years, influenced me."
Zahoor ul Aklaq
In spite of his humility, Akhlaq’s practice would fundamentally reshape the course of contemporary art in Pakistan. Celebrated for his complex, multi-layered visual language, he remained refreshingly direct in his reflections on art. As early as 1966, he declared: "The paintings on view are no more, no less than paintings. They don't have to be 'understood'." This freedom from rigid interpretation enabled him to pursue an expansive and experimental practice across painting, printmaking and sculpture.
His works continually negotiated between history and modernity, representation and abstraction, structure and ambiguity. In Radio Photo of Objects Unidentified (1983), the composition evokes the page of a Mughal manuscript, while Untitled (1991) places a female silhouette before an enigmatic architectural frame, suggestive of a threshold into one of Akhlaq's abstract worlds.
Born in Delhi in 1941 and raised in Karachi after Partition, Akhlaq studied at Lahore's National College of Arts under Shakir Ali before pursuing postgraduate studies in printmaking at Hornsey College of Art and the Royal College of Art in London between 1966 and 1969. Returning to Pakistan, he began a teaching career at the National College of Arts that spanned nearly three decades, becoming Head of the Fine Arts Department in 1979. His influence as an educator proved as significant as his own artistic production. He was instrumental in establishing the Miniature Painting Department at the college, transforming a centuries-old tradition into a dynamic contemporary art form and shaping generations of artists including Rashid Rana, Shahzia Sikander and Imran Qureshi.
The enduring importance of his contribution was recognised in 2016 when Rashid Rana selected Akhlaq as one of ArtReview's "Future Greats," honouring artists whose work continues to resonate beyond their lifetime. Reflecting on his teacher's legacy, Rana noted that Akhlaq's work "set a precedent that provided frameworks to many contemporary artists, for shaping questions of identity and its relationship to physical and chronological location." Today, Akhlaq's works are represented in major international collections including Tate, London; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; and the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto.
If Akhlaq's art sought to expand the possibilities of the image, Sheherezade Alam devoted herself to the transformative possibilities of clay.
"There is the language of dance with a pot. And a constant sense of return, stages of handling, nurturing… If I had not experienced clay, how could I have understood life, death, dying, and being born again, tested by fire, re-claiming life… You touch the material, and you begin to be transformed."
-Sheherezade Alam
For Alam, clay was not simply a medium but a living force. Through timeless vessel forms and luminous glazes, she articulated a profound engagement with the history of ceramics, drawing inspiration from traditions that stretched back to Neolithic Chinese pottery and the vestiges of the Indus Valley civilisations. The act of throwing clay on the wheel became, for her, a symbolic communion with the earth itself, a process through which both maker and material were transformed.
The South Asia Edit presents thirty-two ceramics from Alam’s 1990s practice. Drawing on the silhouettes of traditional South Asian vessels, across dishes, vases, matka pots and urali bowls, the potter reimagined these forms on her own terms. Blending metallic lustres, speckled glazes and fluted rims, Alam was known to tirelessly experiment with materials, palettes and finishes. The exquisite profiles and rich materiality of this collection from the estate of the artist reveal Alam’s mastery of the wheel and the firing process.
Born in Lahore in 1948, Alam graduated with a diploma in Design from the National College of Arts in 1972. In 1983-4, she undertook post-graduate studies at West Surrey College of Art & Design, England, and worked in Cornwall and Wales with master potters including Clive Bowen and Takeshi Yasuda. Alam worked across stoneware, earthenware and porcelain and is considered one of Pakistan’s premier potters.
Her commitment to ceramics extended beyond her studio. Through teaching appointments in Lahore, at Bilkent University in Turkey and at Toronto's Arcadia Co-op, she shared her knowledge with successive generations. Following her permanent move to Toronto in 1999, she became an advocate for Pakistani artistic heritage, founding the collective LAAL in 2000 and establishing the Jahan-e-Jahanara Centre for Traditional Arts for Children in 2009. These initiatives reflected her dedication to preserving and promoting the artistic traditions that had so profoundly informed her work.
Brought together in this exhibition from the artists' estate and presented in partnership with Jhaveri Contemporary, the works of Zahoor ul Akhlaq and Sheherezade Alam reveal two distinct yet complementary visions. Seen side by side, their works illuminate a shared commitment to reimagining tradition through contemporary practice while remaining profoundly individual in form and intent.
