College Art Association, 2027: “The Fakir and the General” as part of “Supporting Art After Authoritarianism,” Thursday, February 4, 2027, 4:30 PM – 6:00 PM.
I will be presenting on the work of Sadequain Naqvi (Pakistan, 1930-1987) before and during the dictatorship of Zia ul Haq in Pakistan in the 1980s. Sadequain’s prominence during the Zia period cemented his reputation as Pakistan’s most famous and popular artist but it has also caused headaches for art historians troubled by his “co-option” by a violent dictatorship. Building on close analysis of Sadequain’s paintings and murals along with the writings of reformist thinker Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938), my paper speculates on the philosophical basis of Sadequain’s belief that his work could outrun ideological capture and how that belief played out in visual form.
‘Abstract Realism’ in Murtaja Baseer’s ‘Wall’ series, 1966-1971, upcoming, Oxford Art Journal, 2027.
An article on painter the “Wall” series of Murtaja Baseer (Bangladesh, 1932-2020) is forthcoming with Oxford Art Journal. The article is based on an interview with the artist from 2018 and situates his “Wall” paintings within and against Cold War bifurcations between abstraction and realism in the 1960s.
“Play Me: Conversations with Amin Gulgee” now out in Amin Gulgee: No Man’s Land, (2025: Skira)
My essay on Amin Gulgee’s practice in its art historical context is now out in the monograph No Man’s Land published by Skira in 2025 and edited by John McCarry.
Abstract States: Modernism in Lebannon, Syria, and Turkey (ARTMargins (2024) 13, Issue 1)
Book review of Anneka Lenssen’s, Beautiful Agitation: Modern Painting and Politics in Syria (2020), Zeina Maasri’s, Cosmopolitan Radicalism: The Visual Politics of Beirut’s Global Sixties (2020) and Sarah-Neel Smith’s, Metrics of Modernity: Art and Development in Postwar Turkey, (2022)
My article on Iqbal Geoffrey’s attempts to sue MoMA in New York for human rights discrimination in 1971 is now out in Art History. If you do not have institutional access, the full article is available on Academia.edu.
