merican art critic Leo Steinberg thus begins his essay Art Conquers All: “If there was ever a conflict in the home of a painter, his wife’s portrait would be the last place to confess it.” In the same vein, one can argue that home is the last resort for producing artistic work. This belief underpins the common practice of looking down upon the home in comparison to the studio. For many, separating the two is akin to differentiating between an amateur painter and a professional artist, and/ or segregating craft from art. Consequently, for centuries, images created by women – whether in the form of quilts, patchworks, crochets, embroidery, doll making, wall drawings or basketry – were considered lower forms of picture making.

In traditional, feudal and patriarchal societies, women, confined to their homes, were associated with domestic chores. In contrast, men could free themselves from domestic confines and disregard physical, emotional and financial responsibilities to pursue high art. Paul Gauguin, a perfect example of an unbound genius, abandoned his home and left his wife and four children to survive without his support in pursuit of his passion for art.

However, over the past fifty years or more, this erroneous assumption has been discredited. With awareness born out of postmodernity, feminism and subaltern studies, the presence of the Other has been recognised, acknowledged, and integrated into art history. Faith Ringgold, “best known for her narrative quilts,” is now regarded as a major artist from the US. Several female artists—including some from Pakistan—have consciously or intuitively adapted and incorporated techniques from traditional tapestry into their art. Risham Syed, Ruby Chishti, Aisha Khalid and Mehr Afroze, to name a few, have drawn upon elements from this traditionally feminine practice, alongside their counterparts from South Asia and other parts of the world.

Today, most modern and contemporary artists work out of their domestic spaces. However, with the advent of Covid-19, the home became a workplace across genders, ages and professions. During the pandemic, many of us—perhaps for the first time—were confined to our homes 24/7. We conducted classes via Zoom, joined office meetings away from our desks, shopped for essentials (and luxuries) online, and interacted with family, friends and colleagues through video calls. Conferences and seminars were attended from our bedrooms; and exhibition tours were experienced through our computer screens. Our step counts dwindled, our energy drained away and our world was reduced to the confines of our homes. Yet, we persevered and, in time, adapted to a new reality.

Realising that home was the world, and the world was home—a hard and bitter lesson everyone learned and has not forgotten since. This realisation opened up opportunities to explore the greater and previously unimagined dimensions of home. This theme was manifested in the second edition of Domestic Provocations, a group exhibition held in connection with the recently concluded ThinkFest (January 11-12, Alhamra Arts Centre, Lahore). The exhibition featured works deeply ingrained in the domestic environment, now reimagined and repurposed, removed from their household functions. Stripped from their daily routine and familiar backdrops, these objects were placed in a gallery setting—part of an intellectual and academic event visited by the public from diverse social classes, professions and interests—making the exhibits all the more relevant.

Not everyone owns art, but everyone has a place of residence, whether rented, purchased, built, inherited or allotted. Domestic Provocations—curated by Shabnam Syed Khan, Rohma Khan, Faseeh Saleem and Iram Zia Raja—included practitioners from various disciplines, including visual art, design, architecture, writing, acting, law, film direction and music. The exhibition aimed to create a connection, if not a bridge, between the atelier and the living room, the workshop and the display centre, alienation and familiarity.

It could be seen as an effort to expand the concept, definition and construction of art and other expressions traditionally tied to the so-called creative act. Each exhibit in Domestic Provocations appeared to provide a layered exploration of thought and process rather than merely image and practice. This approach was exemplified by Shabnam Syed Khan’s series of six digital prints, Consciousness Curriculum (CC) – An Artful Speculation for 21st Century Ed, which illustrated this shift in perspective.

The exhibition aimed to create a connection, if not a bridge, between the atelier and the living room, the workshop and the display centre, alienation and familiarity.

Khan’s work featured four op-ed articles from The New York Times and two typed descriptions—materials typically not found in a gallery setting. Each newspaper sheet, globally circulated in countless copies, was transformed into a personalised and thus invaluable artefact (not in the monetary sense) through the artist’s interventions. For a course on higher education she conducted at Harvard University, Khan marked, annotated and commented in the margins, underlined key texts, outlined certain sections and added necessary details. Her scribblings, made in various coloured inks, conveyed a spectrum of involvement, responses and reflections, often revealing the urgency or calmness of the reader.

What was displayed on the gallery wall, illuminated by spotlights, was, in fact, a familiar sight. Many of us who still prefer printed newspapers and engage with stories of personal interest and relevance by jotting down notes could easily relate to this activity—an act that echoes Roland Barthes’ assertion that a text is ultimately written by the reader.

The phenomenon of the reader in the role of the author was observed in Point of View: Annotated, the Aarish Sardar’s installation (or was it a work desk?). Sardar, besides teaching and practicing visual communication design, has been writing on art and culture. In the exhibition, spectators came across a number of stapled A4, typed pages laid on a pedestal, each bearing a few editing marks. In fact, these were Aarish Sardar’s already published pieces; reread and re-corrected by the author. Writers contributing to newspapers, magazines, catalogues and books usually cannot refrain themselves from further editing while going through printed versions of their texts. This reminds one of a novelist’s comment that “books are only put to press when publishers can stop authors from rewriting and revising them.”

A text is transformed with shifts in formats: long hand or typed on a piece of paper, black letters on a computer screen, printed in a newspaper, compiled and collected in a book – first a proof copy, then the hard-bound, followed by paperback. Other common items, too get, transformed over time. Some transform through interventions too, as demonstrated by Masooma Syed in her small compositions of cardboard boxes. An old edition of an Urdu book (Khali Botlein, Khali Dabbay) by Saadat Hasan Manto), white embroidered fabric, and other knick-knacks in Carton Tales: Mr Manto; and dried flowers and stems placed in empty perfume bottles and other glassware in Project Virginia Woolf, offered tiny versions of private space – not necessarily living, but as intimate and worthless a home seems every day.

The home motif was depicted in a pair of sensitively fabricated oil on-wood paintings (Drifting Homes I, II) by Ayesha Naeem. The shape and image of both works resembled brown folded paper; but the pleats and layout of papers delineated the archetypical form of the house, widely drawn by children. Also, a brown sheet is often used for wrapping an object, much like a house that contains and conceals a human being. Faseeh Saleem, in his series of 9 photographs (Material Body) documented the custom of covering. Trash cans with plastic bags; sheets of foam in white wrappings; a sort of wooden box under crisp plastic in the snow; kitchen, garden and construction gloves left inserted into thin bars of timber and other surfaces signified the modern-day habit of clothing valuables, a ritual or trend that spreads from home to outside, from domestic gadgets (TV remote controls, mobile phones, laptop computers in transparent foil) to car seats protected by water-resistant fabric (or leatherette), vehicles under a thick tarpaulin, and books for sale in clear plastic. You see everything; but cannot touch it (a glove in its essence is a protection against touch).

The presence of gloves and other means of resisting intimacy in Saleem’s superbly conceived photographs, in addition to suggesting a multitude of concerns and contents, alludes to the distance between humans and non-humans, between skin and objects used by human beings. Including this imagery in the exhibition indicates the distance between art and life; between highbrow art and popular imagery, from studio to gallery – gaps which were questioned or covered through Domestic Provocations.

The writer is an art critic, a curator and a professor at the School of Visual Arts and Design, Beaconhouse National University, Lahore.