Despite the same 365 days, 2019 seems to stretch longer than a normal calendar year. Humans have a strange relationship with the documentation of time: an entity invented by them. Though we have contained and marked the passage of time by seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, centuries, millenniums - these divisions appear arbitrary.

Jorge Luis Borges once said, “Each man is given, in dreams, a little personal eternity which allows him to see the recent past and the near future”. This can be identified by anyone waiting for a lover, friend, or family. Minutes before the expected individual, seem to spread to hours. A sensation not dissimilar to when we look back at this year in retrospective. Just as 2019 appears to have expanded, so has the lens of visual arts. In the span of 12 months, there have been much activity in Pakistani art.

One major event of 2019, was the COMO Museum in Lahore. Inaugurated on 23^rd February with a group show titled One, featuring six important artists of our times, it added a new dimension to our art scene. An institution parallel to any place of contemporary art in the world, is now promoting the art of this region. The first exhibition presented works of Rashid Rana, Risham Syed, Salman Toor, Ali Kazim, Saba Khan and Naiza Khan. It was a rare occasion to view several works by Rashid Rana in Lahore, including some of his iconic pieces such as I Love Miniatures, Books I, Dis-Location I, Red Carpet I, and War Within VIII.

Alongside there were two artists, lately making their presence felt internationally. Salman Toor with his incredibly constructed and rendered paintings, is having his first museum solo exhibition How Will I Know at the Whitney Museum of American Art from March 20 to July 5, 2020. Naiza Khan was selected for the first Pakistan Pavilion at the 58^th Venice Biennale (May11-Nov 24), with her solo project Manora Field Notes. On one hand her inclusion was significant as it recognised the contribution of a contemporary artist, at the same time it was a huge step, being part of the most prestigious art event in the world, since Venice Biennale represents the pulse of now, beyond markets and locations.

Pakistan also has its own biennales. This year Karachi hosted the event, where the debacle of censoring – and destroying – Adeela Suleman’s installation eclipsed everything else. Making a number of other works – by Imran Qureshi and Rashid Rana – invisible to the public. There was a blatant attempt to make some of the works irrelevant by containing, controlling and clamping down on an artwork on the pretext of not being ‘thematically correct’.

However, the sculpture of Hamra Abbas (Gardens of Paradise), Ali Kazim’s combination of watercolour on paper and sound (The Conference of Birds), and Seher Naveed’s site-specific installation (Concert, Extinct, Wasted) were impressive works at an event which surprisingly hosted a large number of ordinary pieces.

“Each man is given, in dreams, a little personal eternity which allows him to see the recent past and the near future”

There was a criticism on the works included at the Karachi Biennale 19 - though less than what was directed against the Karachi Biennale Team’s stance on desecrating Adeela Suleman’s work - but by and large exhibitions of such ambitious scale do tend to have works from diverse practices. Like previous editions of the fair, this year’s event also invited a number of galleries and artists from different parts of the world – as far as Columbia, but a major presence of Pakistani artists was noticed at some gallery booths: Hamra Abbas at Canvas Gallery, Adeela Suleman at Aicon Gallery and Shezad Dawood at Jhaveri Contemporary.

Moreover, there were works from across the border. A visitor from Pakistan connected with works from Indian artists such as Shilpa Gupta and Sudarshan Shetty, the way they felt for the imagery of Waqas Khan, Mohammad Ali Talpur and Rasheed Araeen at the same venue.

Artists across Paksitan, also exhibited their works around the world, including Imran Qureshi at Gallery Ropac of Pantin in Paris and Wardha Shabbir at Grosvenor Gallery London. Both artists, through their works, were witnessing the changing tradition of miniature painting, in order to create works which dealt with the language of contemporary art, conversing in the idiom of mark, shape and geometry.

The evolution of miniature painting was examined by young artists from the NCA, specialising in miniature, at the exhibition, Space in Time, held on February 21 till June 16 at the Museum Reitberg, Zurich. These works produced by 23 artists in response to the Museum’s collection of miniatures offered multiple approaches and strategies to connect with cultural heritage. Through inquiry, critique, inquisition and innovation – new works, at par with past examples, were produced.

Artist residencies most visibly display this bridging of barriers – where creative personalities from different disciplines, trainings and experiences interact with each other and produce works – which are in every sense of the word – far from the comfort of their studios.

In the 3^rd edition of the ‘Pioneer Artists Residency’ in collaboration with Canvas Gallery, Karachi, invited a number of major artists to work at the Pioneer Cement Factory in Khushab and create site-specific art. This resulted in some of the most memorable pieces from the year, manufactured in the middle of nowhere.

Such as Remain of the Day II, a series of digitally printed portraits of participants from the residency, as they wake up. These pictures demarcate the imperceptible frontier between sleep and wakefulness, day and night, and dream and reality.

A reality made into dream or a dream made reality, was the Islamabad Art Festival 19, inviting a large number of artists, curators and art organizers. There was wide (and wild) ranging responses on this art event, which involved foreign missions as well, but one believes it will evolve over years to come.

Bidding adieus to this year one is hopeful that the next will be as fruitful, fertile and forceful as 2019. Although in reality, the change from 2019 to 2020 will take place in less than a nano-second. What does that tiny unit of time mean, while writing the history of art as one simultaneously tries to maintain a balance at the end of the year?

— Jorge Luis Borges