AAN Art Space & Museum

22/03/2026

Eid Mubarak from the AAN Collection!

This work by Aisha Khalid is in the AAN Collection and is titled Pattern to Follow, 2010. This work was exhibited at the Pao Galleries at the Hong Kong Art Centre and the Sharjah Biennial. It is reminiscent of the new crescent moon.

The work was inspired by the architectural details in the domes of the 17th Century Mughal Badshahi Mosque in Lahore!

19/03/2026

27/02/2026

The Archive - In Form
Curated by Farah Mahbub
5th March 2026

In the spring of 1997, a modest photography course took root along the shoreline of Karachi at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture (IVS). Over the years, it evolved from a course into a studio minor and eventually in 2020 into a full-fledged major.

This exhibition brings together a group of IVS alumni whose practices have matured beyond the institution. It honors not only their professional accomplishments but also the formative years that shaped their ways of seeing. Moving between analogue and digital, the works trace the evolution of photography as both craft and concept.

It invites viewers into images shaped by introspection, memory and vulnerability. In a time of ambiguity, this exhibition foregrounds the personal as a space of inquiry. These works emerge from private narratives yet resonate with collective experiences. Drawing on an awareness of transience and the quiet melancholy of fleeting time, the exhibition highlights photography as a sensitive and reflective medium attentive to what lingers even as it fades.

.mansoor
Mansoor K Rana Malik Farah Mahbub Humayun Memon Kanwal Anjum Khaula Jamil Mahmood Ali photography IVS light memory

28/10/2025

When The Waters Speak - Art as Witness - A Review by Ahmed Mustafa in the Karachi Collective on the exhibition Sailaab at AAN Art Space & Museum. Artists include Rasheed Araeen, Malika Abbas, Arif Mehmood, Sohail Zuberi, Namra Khalid and Saad Aslam Ali.

The recent 2025 floods in Pakistan echo a devastatingly familiar script from 2022. A recurring nightmare has once again befallen our nation: villages submerged, millions displaced, and an overwhelmed relief system1 . More than 4.2 million people were affected and 4,100 villages inundated this year2....

06/10/2025

Public Programming

In conjunction with the exhibition Sailaab at AAN Art Space & Museum on the 9th of October

Re-imagining Water, is a conversation between artists and environmental experts on challenging climate patterns and urban infrastructure.

The inadequacy of urban infrastructure and the impact of climate change is now being felt with an urgency, although it has been slow process of environmental degradation. The curatorial intention is to locate changes in climate, patterns of rain and its interface with the city’s infrastructure. Karachi and its environs have seen tremendous changes along the coastal belt with rising sea level, a disruption of water channels leading to the sea through construction over time. The erosion of the sea with untreated water, lack of will or strategy to create and safeguard sustainable green belts, and many interrelated factors have made Karachi vulnerable to the worst kind of environmental disasters.
At ‘Sailaab’, the expression of a diverse group of artists spans the photographic documentation of prior floods in Sind, often poetic response to the aftermath of flooded homes in Karachi by the coast, and abstract ideas that locate water within ideological frameworks of colonization. This core exposes not only the vulnerabilities of private relationships and physical spaces, but also a collective angst. The artistic narratives here occupy not one hat: they ‘speak’, think, record from diverse experiences and histories with vast generational distances. They are engineers/artists, miniature artist turned photographer, architect turned environmental activist, and all of these simultaneously. I myself am an artist, turned art critic who choses to curate, or if I may say so, to ‘un-curate’. While the ambiguities provide a critical lens within the viewing and curating of art, one of the strands is to reimagine solutions to climate through the interdisciplinary. Can the museum be a space of activism, from where art moves out of its comfort level, into the lived experience, outside what is often a self-referential discourse. The gap between the inside/outside is a matter of perspective and perception, but conversations and collaborations allow for a more informed, tolerant and humane connection to the environment.

Moderated by Amra Ali
Curator of Sailaab

06/10/2025

Review of ‘Sailaab’ by Rumana Hussain in the Dawn Newspaper - An Exhibition at AAN Art Space & Museum, Curated by Amra Ali. Artists: Rasheed Araeen, Arif Mehmood, Malika Abbas, Sohail Zuberi, Namra Khalid & Saad Aslam Ali.

A timely exhibition sees artists confronting recurring flooding across Pakistan, not just as natural disasters but as lived crises

26/09/2025

Review of the exhibition Sailaab at AAN Art Space & Museum by Alizeh Afzal in Art Now Pakistan. This exhibition is curated by Amra Ali and showcases the works of the legend Rasheed Areen, Malika Abbas, Arif Mehmood, Sohail Zuberi, Namra Khalid and Saad Aslam Ali!

This group exhibition unfolds as a meditation on water’s power to shape memory, displace lives, and leave behind fragile traces of strength. The exhibition Sailaab, curated by Amra Ali at AAN Art Space and Museum, was scheduled to open on 21 August 2025, but, in a fittingly poetic twist, Karachi w...

26/08/2025

We at AAN are honoured to show the work of the legend Rasheed Araeen at the exhibition Sailab at AAN Art Space & Museum curated by Amra Ali.

“This monsoon, diverse narratives have organically gelled, though through very different routes, concerns and contexts. Poignant vignettes of loss, displacement, retrieval and transformation provide multiple layers of viewing and meaning. There is an underlying urgency in coming to terms with floods today. There is a focus on rural and remote areas of coastal Sind, as well as in urban centres such as Karachi. The curatorial intention has been to draw into the work of practitioners whose response to water patterns has been ongoing, moving away from commissioned art, into spaces that engage you to reflect and in which you may incidentally find yourself. These are shared narratives of memories of places and people lost, where we arrive often after a traumatic shift within our surroundings: land, homes and belongings lost or submerged, also providing a critique of polarities within lifestyles and social realities.
There is a predominant archival presence, and simultaneous opening of trajectories/arteries which the viewer can experience, and navigate through. Ideas that allow you to drift into spaces of beauty and stillness amid the obvious references to inundation and torrent. Disruption is part of the process, whether it is in the depiction of a space or in the installation of the works, evoking the ongoing process of land reclamation, and water reclaiming the land. This imbalance seems integral to the curatorial reading. There has been no desire to conceal, but rather to enjoy, akin to an unedited conversation, an unfinished painting; to find comfort in the subtle nuances and shifts from one body of work to another. The spaces in between and the viewer in it become integral to the reading.

Amra Ali
28th August 2025, AAN Art Space & Museum

@arifmahmoodphoto




&museum

26/08/2025

“This monsoon, diverse narratives have organically gelled, though through very different routes, concerns and contexts. Poignant vignettes of loss, displacement, retrieval and transformation provide multiple layers of viewing and meaning. There is an underlying urgency in coming to terms with floods today. There is a focus on rural and remote areas of coastal Sind, as well as in urban centres such as Karachi. The curatorial intention has been to draw into the work of practitioners whose response to water patterns has been ongoing, moving away from commissioned art, into spaces that engage you to reflect and in which you may incidentally find yourself. These are shared narratives of memories of places and people lost, where we arrive often after a traumatic shift within our surroundings: land, homes and belongings lost or submerged, also providing a critique of polarities within lifestyles and social realities.
There is a predominant archival presence, and simultaneous opening of trajectories/arteries which the viewer can experience, and navigate through. Ideas that allow you to drift into spaces of beauty and stillness amid the obvious references to inundation and torrent. Disruption is part of the process, whether it is in the depiction of a space or in the installation of the works, evoking the ongoing process of land reclamation, and water reclaiming the land. This imbalance seems integral to the curatorial reading. There has been no desire to conceal, but rather to enjoy, akin to an unedited conversation, an unfinished painting; to find comfort in the subtle nuances and shifts from one body of work to another. The spaces in between and the viewer in it become integral to the reading”.

Amra Ali
28th August 2025, AAN Art Space & Museum

@arifmahmoodphoto




&museum