4 - On gaze and power: Women activism and visual arts in Pakistan

Women’s struggle for their fundamental rights takes various forms all over South Asia. In the recent years we may observe an intense fight against patriarchy and conservatism taking numerous shapes and involving different means of communication and media. My current research focuses on the concepts of visuality, visibility, and embodiment (as well as invisibility and absence) in the literature and visual art of contemporary India and Pakistan, with a particular emphasis on women's issues. As part of a bigger project aimed at examining visual culture’s engagements in socio-political context within South Asia, this presentation will provide a semi-semiotic analysis of imagery used to represent gender issues, social inequalities and taboos, with the emphasis on their symbolism and ways it conveys meaning to the spectator/reader. It will explore the problem of (in)visibility of women in public in Pakistan, showing how women make themself present and/or visible in those spaces, using visual and verbal means of expression. This analysis will based on works by Naiza Khan, Shehzil Malik, and Maliha Ali, as well as materials collected during the fieldwork in Karachi and Lahore in 2023, especially Aurat March posters and placards.