Imran Mir’s (1950-2014) oeuvre can be interpreted as a constant refusal to provide comprehensive elaboration beyond what one experiences. The act of contemplation is a guiding principle to interpreting Imran Mir’s work, an approach that reverberates into a practice that grew out of conversations with a community of artists, activists, poets, relatives, and other thinkers in Karachi.
Non-figurative, non-representational, geometrical and very bold, Imran Mir’s works can be read as theorems and positions on multiple modernisms and abstractions. Without being a critique or a response, he played with the rules, bypassing and expanding them to other realms to explore ways of being, ways of knowing time and space outside of the confinements of the West.
Imran Mir – A World that is not Entirely Reflective but Contemplative
15.5 x 23.5 cm
Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung
Abstracting Parables
These readers are published in conjunction with Abstracting Parables (July 1 – October 16, 2022), which consists of an exhibition presented as a triptych and a sonic journey through guides, scripts, rituals, and murmurings. It brings together
the artistic positions of Sedje Hémon (1923-2011), Abdias Nascimento (1914-2011) and Imran Mir (1950-2014).
It is curated by Amal Alhaag and Aude Christel Mgba with the support of Zippora Elders, Krista Jantowski and Stedelijk curator Claire van Els, under the artistic direction of Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung for sonsbeek20→24 and Rein Wolfs for Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
The exhibition is framed within the quadrennial sonsbeek20→24 “Force Times Distance: On Labour and Its Sonic Ecologies,” Arnhem, the Netherlands.
Abstracting Parables is developed in partnership with the Sedje Hémon Foundation, Afro-Brazilian Studies and Research Institute (IPEAFRO) and the Imran Mir Art Foundation. The exhibition is a joint partnership between Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Stichting Sonsbeek.