Mahbub Jokhio

Born in 1992 in Mehrabpur (Pakistan)
Lives and works in Lahore (Pakistan)

Mahbub Jokhio graduated with distinction from Beaconhouse National University in Visual Arts as a UMISSA scholar, and currently teaches at the National College of Arts, Lahore.. Utilising a variety of mediums and spanning diverse subject matter, his work hinges on the explicit appropriation and incorporation of conflicting signs, symbols and illusory indexes, drawing into question patterns of perception and intention in their ambiguity. Jokhio’s work has been shown in a variety of exhibitions, at venues including: IVS Gallery, Karachi; TAG, Lahore; Canvas Gallery, Karachi; and Alhamra Art Gallery, Lahore. He was also recently awarded a Gasworks Residency in London.

In Jokhio’s site-specific installation for the Karachi Biennale 2017, Jese Shahr-e-Madfoon Py Waqt Guzray!, the artist has recreated a children’s graveyard, constructing the graves out of mud, bricks and plastered with cement. The vibrant, gaudy colour scheme of the graves belies the sombre subject matter, epitomising Jokhio’s aesthetic discourse between images and their epistemology. The way in which the work’s bright and colourful final manifestation is unable to be separated from the basis of its subject matter, replicating the form of children’s final resting places, visually represents the inseparability of life and death in the human experience. Simultaneously, it analogously comments on the failings of the Pakistani education system, suggesting that the superficial concealment of these flaws does not change the collective realities of the children that it has failed.