Mirror Image 1, 2, 3

Lala Rukh Pakistani

Not on view

Mirror Image 1, 2, 3 responds to uprisings in India and Pakistan in the early 1990s. Following the destruction of the Babri Masjid Mosque in Ayodhya, India in 1992, communal violence ensued, and riots took place over years in cities like Mumbai, Dhaka and Lahore, which lead to the desecration of temples in Pakistan. For these drawings, Lala Rukh cut out images that ran alongside news reports of the riots and desecrations in both India and Pakistan. She blackened the found images, abstracted them, and then attached them to sheets of grid paper. The gesture of darkening the images, making them indiscernible, obfuscating the imagery, is Rukh’s riposte to the negative, sensational, propagandist impact the widely circulated images had in the media.

Mirror Image 1, 2, 3, Lala Rukh (Pakistani, Lahore 1948–2017 Lahore), Graphite, charcoal and ink on newspaper attached to graph paper on paperboard

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