In February the Ashmolean will be opening an exhibition of works from contemporary Pakistani artist, Ali Kazim. The exhibition will be the culmination of his time as Oxford University’s first South Asian Artist-in-Residence.

2022 is the 75th anniversary of the creation of Pakistan, and in February the Ashmolean will open a solo exhibition for one of the country’s leading contemporary artists, Ali Kazim. Ali Kazim: Suspended in Time will show 23 works including new pieces made from 2019-21, alongside objects from the Ashmolean collections which have inspired Kazim’s work. The exhibition will be the culmination of his time as Oxford University’s first South Asian Artist-in-Residence.

Ali Kazim was born in Pattoki, in central Punjab. He trained at the National College of Arts, Lahore and at the Slade School, London and returned to Lahore where he is now Assistant Professor. He has exhibited in group and solo exhibitions across the world and his work is held in major collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the British Museum and the V&A.

In 2019 Oxford’s Classical Art Research Centre, in collaboration with the Ashmolean, invited Ali Kazim to be Artist-in-Residence on the Gandhara Connections Research Programme. During this period he spent time at the Ashmolean studying and responding to the collections. Gandhara was an area on the northern Pakistan- Afghanistan border where Greek and Roman expansion to the east (from 300 BCE) converged with the spread of Buddhism in South Asia, giving rise to a unique Classical-Buddhist artistic tradition. The Museum’s collections from this area are rich and include schist (soft stone) sculptures of the Buddha and scenes of his life; and devotional objects for the stupa, the reliquary shrine in Buddhist worship. These have inspired Kazim’s three-dimensional works in clay and terracotta. In his piece called Votive Offerings he has transformed ancient reliquary caskets into minimalist, modern forms – forty small sculptures that evoke ancient shapes and the red earth of Gandhara.

For this exhibition, Ali Kazim has created an extraordinary body of work which offers a profound engagement with the Museum’s collections and the art and history of the subcontinent. Ali has a unique ability to make images that are simultaneously timeless and like nothing you’ve seen before.

The exhibition will run from Monday 7th February until Sunday 26th June 2022, in Gallery 8 on the Lower Ground Floor of the Ashmolean Museum.

Exhibition Catalogue

An accompanying catalogue compiled by the curator, Professor Mallica Kumbera Landrus, and providing further insights into the works on display is also available from Monday 7th February 2022.