SAN FRANCISCO.- The Asian Art Museum will open the exhibit Karkhana: A Contemporary Collaboration through November 5, 2006The work of six contemporary Pakistani artists, Aisha Khalid, Hasnat Mehmood, Muhammad Imran Qureshi, Nusra Latif Qureshi, Talha Rathore, and Saira Wasim, are featured in this unusual exhibition, organized by the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Connecticut.

At the core of the exhibition is a series of collaboratively produced paintings initiated as a creative experiment by Muhammad Imran Qureshi in 2003. He made contact with the five other painters, all alumni of the Miniatures department at the National College of Arts in Lahore but now living in different cities around the world. He suggested that each artist start two paintings made on wasli (rag paper).

Each of these works was then sent to another artist in the group, who applied another layer of imagery, marks, or other processes and passed it along until all of the artists had added to each of the twelve paintings. Karkhana includes these twelve miniature paintings, along with five additional paintings by each of the six artists. These additional works allow viewers to recognize the style of each artist who participated in the collaborations.