FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Twelve Gates Arts (12G) is proud to present Power/Play a group exhibition featuring works by Jagdeep Raina, Noormah Jamal, Hardeep Pandhal and Sophia Balagamwala, opening on Friday March 15th, 2024 at Twelve Gates Arts.
Opening Reception: March 15th, 2024, 6-8pm (Twelve Gates Arts located at 106 N 2nd St, Philadelphia, PA 19106.)
Exhibition Information: Power / Play presents the works of four artists, Sophia Balagamwala, Noormah Jamal, Jagdeep Raina, and Hardeep Pandhal, to consider the immediacy of illustration and animation and their capacity to subvert depictions of power. Though historically, these mediums have been taken up by states and military regimes for propaganda, or to indoctrinate children, they have also been used as tools for dissent– to confront, mock, satirize, and disrupt oppressive structures, social constructs and political narratives.
Automatic drawing and the doodle act as modes of intervention: they are improvised forms of expression that often occur in the margins of ruled paper. Like daydreams, they provide lines of flight from hegemonic speechifying and preachifying. They allow us to imagine new possibilities and depict histories absent from official archives; they are playful methods used to undermine colonial notions of “high art” and the extractive tendencies of institutions. When presented in garrish and crude packaging, critique can surreptitiously get past the eyes of censors and watchful governments – a tactic that Noormah Jamal refers to as “smuggling”.
Bringing together video, animation, painting, and sculpture, the works in Power / Play take up and reference the political cartoon, children’s book aesthetics, early animation, music videos and video games, graffiti, and memes as ways to offer resistance and social catharsis. Power/Play is on view from March 15th to May 18th, 2024 at Twelve Gates Arts located at 106 N 2nd St, Philadelphia, PA 19106.
Gallery Hours: Thursday - Saturday 11am - 5pm or by appointment.
Sophia Balagamwala (b. 1987, Karachi, Pakistan) is a multidisciplinary artist and curator based in Karachi. Her practice merges real and fabricated events to explore questions of nationhood, histories, and the museum complex in South Asia. Balagamwala has a B.A. from the University of Toronto (2010) and an MFA from Cornell University (2014). She has previously worked as the Lead Curator of the National History Museum in Lahore, and is currently an advisor for the Citizens Archive of Pakistan (CAP). In 2021 she was awarded the London, Asia, Art, Worlds artist commission by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. In 2021/2022, Balagamwala was
awarded the Art South Asia Project (ASAP) /British Council grant for her artist research project Inventing the Nation, which is to be published next year. Balagamwala curates a collection of local artist publications under the Kurachee Reading Room, housed previously at the COMO Museum in Lahore, (2021-2022), and currently at the AAN Ideas LAB (ArtSpace&Museum) in Karachi. She teaches at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture.
Noormah Jamal (b. 1992, Peshawar, Pakistan) is a Brooklyn based multidisciplinary artist. She graduated from the National College of Arts Lahore in 2016, majoring in Mughal Miniature Painting and earned her Masters in Fine Arts in Painting and Drawing from Pratt Institute, New York in 2023. Her work centers around identity and the personal baggage that people carry. Her image-making and sculptures are deeply rooted in the oral histories of her people and family. Some of her notable exhibitions include Space in Time at Rietberg Museum in Switzerland and Canvas Gallery Karachi (2019); Sites of Ruin at Twelve Gates Gallery, Philadelphia (2022) and Poetics of Relatability at Aicon Contemporary, New York (2024). Her work has been featured in various publications and media including Hyperallergic, The Herald, The News Pakistan, The Karachi Collective and the Aleph Review. She was an artist in residence at VASL Karachi, for the Taaza Tareen 2019 cycle and was awarded the Imran Mir Art Prize in 2019. Currently she is a member of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Studio Program,New York and is an artist-in-residence with the Children’s Museum of the Arts, New York and ProjectArt, New York.
Hardeep Pandhal (b. 1985, Birmingham, U.K.) works predominantly with drawing and voice to transform feelings of disinheritance and disaffection into generative spaces that bolster interdependence and self-belief. Applying practices of associative thinking, his wide-ranging practice exhibits syncretic strains of post-brown weirdness. Across media, his works are imbued with acerbity and playful complexity; at once confrontational and reflective. Hardeep Pandhal is based in Glasgow His work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including, most recently: The New Art Gallery Walsall (2023); British Art Show 9, Manchester, Wolverhampton, Aberdeen (2021-22); Goldsmiths Centre of Contemporary Art (2020); Tramway, Glasgow (2020); New Art Exchange, Nottingham (2019); Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2019); South London Gallery, London (2018); New Museum, New York (2018); Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham (2018); Eastside Projects, Birmingham (2017); Modern Art Oxford, Oxford (2016). Pandhal’s work is part of a number of prestigious public collections, including Arts Council Collection, UK; British Council Collection, UK; Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow. He was shortlisted for the Jarman Award (2018) and selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries (2013).
Jagdeep Raina (b. 1991, Guelph, Ontario, Canada) has an interdisciplinary practice that spans textile, drawing, writing, ceramics, 35mm film and video animation. Raina utilizes the archive in order to explore historical memory. His multimedia practice seeks to identify the residue left behind by the human touch, and its restorative potential. He lives and works in Queens, New York City, USA.
Ambika Trasi is an artist, writer, and curator. Her research-based practice considers the coloniality of power within images and sites. She has curated exhibitions including Salman Toor: How Will I Know, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2020); A Space for Monsters, Twelve Gates Arts, Philadelphia (2021); and recent solo presentations for Maya Varadaraj and Abir Karmakar at Aicon Contemporary, New York (2023). Her work has been exhibited at Asian Arts Initiative, Philadelphia, and Heroes Gallery, New York. She has presented lecture-performances at Asia Art Archive in America, Brooklyn; Jack Shainman Gallery, New York; and HANGAR - Centro de Investigação Artística, Lisbon. Her essays have been published in catalogues including Clay Pop (Rizzoli); somewhere elsewhere: Sangram Majumdar, (Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke and Jak Printers); and online by the Whitney Museum of American Art; IBRAAZ Journal for Contemporary Visual Culture in North Africa and the Middle East; Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas Journal; and Arcade Project Zine.