NEW YORK.- Aicon Gallery New York presents three female Pakistani artists, Farida Batool, Tazeen Qayyum, and Adeela Suleman, in its recently relocated space on 35 Great Jones Street. During a time of great political upheaval for the country, the three women’s artistic practices speak to the role of women, the tumultuous recent history, and the contemporary view of the nation and its inhabitants in the eyes of the West.

Farida Batool has created a series of lenticular prints to encapsulate a series of brief narratives. Batool prefers the medium to that of video, as the lenticular print allows the viewer to meditate upon a frozen series of moments within a single event, stop at any moment, and review again instantly. Her print Nai Reesan Shehr Lahore Diyan (There is no Match of the City Lahore) reflects upon a series of arsons committed by a mob of religious extremists in response to the 2005 Jylllands-Posten Muhammad cartoon controversy. Through the animation, Batool weighs the evils of both Eastern and Western extremism and finds the greater evil is difficult to identify.
Batool received her MA in Art History and Theory (Research) from the College of Fine Arts at the University of New South Wales, Australia, in 2003. She lives and works in Lahore, Pakistan. Tazeen Qayyum, in Do not Inhale and Test on a Small Area Before Use, has employed the methods of an entomologist to display paint insects with a traditional miniature technique. Qayyum then pins labels around the paintings with facts and myths regarding the hated household pests, pesticide warnings, and facts relating to war, to draw a parallel between the practices of archiving and the language of political propaganda. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from the National College of Arts, Lahore, Pakistan, with an emphasis in Indian Miniature Painting in 1996. She lives and works between Lahore, Pakistan and Toronto, Canada.

Adeela Suleman assembles found household hardware into forms that range in resemblance from strange microorganisms to internal organs and sections of the human body. Crafted from items such as drain covers, nails, showerheads, and fasteners, the finished artworks have a surprisingly delicate quality despite their stainless steel construction. While the domestic origins of her materials may provoke the viewer to label her work as feminist in its intent, Suleman prefers instead to view her works as sketches in three-dimensional form realized through the potential of combining these disparate elements. Suleman received a Masters of Arts in International Relations from the University of Karachi in 1999, and continues to live and work in Karachi, Pakistan.