Jhuley Lal: Crafting the Contemporary

“Jhuley Lal: Crafting the Contemporary” is a dialogue between heritage and modernity, explored through an exhibition of pieces designed and fabricated as part of a collaborative residency project in Shikarpur and Karachi in 2023. The exhibition comes as the economic viability of traditional crafts in Pakistan faces severe strain, exacerbated by the 2022 floods and a cultural shift towards the mass-produced. The project, initiated by Numaish Karachi and THISS Studio, supported by the British Council was conceived as a strategic intervention, bringing together leading emergent artists and designers from Pakistan and the UK with local craftspeople from Khairpur, Shikarpur and Karachi. The artisans found themselves in dialogue with modern creative practitioners, leading to an infusion of contemporary aesthetics with age-old methods. The pieces place collaboration at their heart, with practitioners working together across cultures and occasionally language barriers to co-create designs. The residency allowed them a temporarily shared context in the crafts villages where materials are grown, extracted and processed. Some pieces mine the existing building fabric for materials, and others use raw materials and learn from their processing. “Jhuley Lal: Crafting the Contemporary” offers an exploration of how cultural heritage might find new forms of relevance in a rapidly changing world. In this regard, the show is less a celebration and more a contemplation of the possible futures of Sindh’s craft traditions.