Miyan Mithoo

Having trained initially at the National College of Art, Lahore and then subsequently the Slade School of Fine Art, Ali Kazim has devised a distinctive painting practice informed by various traditions of South Asian miniature painting. An accomplished draughtsman, he has evolved for himself a rigorous formal technique of working that requires great attention and patience.



Kazim begins with a pencil underdrawing that is then followed by what miniaturists refer to as siyah qalam (black pen), which involves going over the pencil outline with a fine brush dipped in black ink. Once this basic composition is achieved in black and white, color is introduced with watercolor pigments in gum arabic. The entire work is then washed in a shallow trough of water to affix the granulated pigments. With subsequent washes, layers of color are taken away, leaving behind parts of pigment, bestowing the work with an overall textured surface. Kazim instinctively decides when he wants to stop bathing the work when the paper reaches a saturation point and picks up the qalam again for the final stage of the process: the application of paints in small dots known as paradakht.


Kazim uses wasli paper for his works, a paper stock used in miniature painting, whose hardiness allows him to repeatedly bathe the work. It is a slow and labor intensive way of working, and it takes Kazim nearly two months to complete one painting. The final effect Kazim achieves is deeply sensual and tactile. The pictures have a diffused, at times soft quality to them that only adds to the allure of his subjects, who are generally solitary men.


These portraits of men, depicted unclothed from above the torso, at times in profile engaged in activities or making gestures that are inscrutable. His men are not wrought anatomically, but come from his own observations of real men he has encountered. The sense of mystery around them is further heightened by the monochromatic backgrounds against which they are met. Such deliberate framing, offering no context, sense of place or narrative, Kazim makes his male subjects even more unknowable. It might even seem like an intrusion to observe Kazim’s subjects who seem distant, suspended in time and lost in their own worlds, like in Miyan Mithoo where the male subject seems captivated with a parrot. These lone masculine figures, are delicately rendered not as idealized forms or heroic in their activities or dispositions, but glimpsed in private, perhaps even perceived as tender, playful and even vulnerable. Therefore, Kazim’s paintings defy expectations, invite close looking and with his deeply considered manner of working are bestowed with an intangible quality that even with repeated viewings remain enigmatic.