About Shafi's Practice: 

 

Mohsin Shafi is a South Asian - Pakistan based artist, whose work is informed by his born-and-raised-pakistani encounters and dissident musings. He primarily engages local narratives from the Indian subcontinent,

with focus in pakistan, examining collective and respective chronicles of longing and belonging. Identifying

as a bohemian and digital nomad, he incorporates The classical elements typically refer to earth, water, air, fire and aether in his practice for the portrayals of his narratives. A lot of his work is inspired by the Tribal Practices for wellness in Indian Subcontinent. The myths and magic traditions coming from novel-grimoires, published in Urdu-reading India in the early twentieth century. His work also takes references from countercultural movement seeking to redefine queer consciousness through secular spirituality. His practice is further complemented by his ability to find research material in global popular culture, media, politics, Urdu and Punjabi poetry, and

Indo-Pak cinema. In such instances, his works are not simply a two dimensional image, but may be a cinematic enterprise, a collection of artifacts, or even a curated journey through history. By combining sentiments of tragedy, tenderness and humour, he seeks to create non-colonial gestures to enact healing, rebalance and repair.

Shafi's practice encompasses the themes of chaos and conflicts around navigating culture and identity; transgression and transfiguration of masculinity and gender crossover; articulating territorial struggles of sexuality within religious and spiritual subcultures; the clash of social norms and individual aspirations; the fantasies and anxieties between attachment and disaffection, beliefs and manifestations, hate and love. In his works, the public and private merges into a  single narrative, probing the tight spaces between lucidity and madness, intimacy and alienation, desire and ambivalence, the living and the absent. 

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Ahsan Masood

Academic / Artist / writer

MA Cultural and Religious History of South Asia, Heidelberg University, Germany 

MFA from Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Finland 

Bachelor of Visual Communication, National College of Arts, Lahore Pakistan

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