Syed Safdar Ali

Born in 1983 in Tando Jam (Pakistan)
Lives and works in Lahore (Pakistan)

Syed Safdar Ali received his BFA (with Distinction) from the National College of Arts, Lahore, in 2014. His work has been exhibited widely in Pakistan, at venues including: Gandhara Art Space, Karachi; Pioneer Cement Plant, Jouharabad; Canvas Gallery, Karachi; IVS Gallery, Karachi; Zahoor ul Akhlaq Gallery, Lahore; Satrang Gallery, Islamabad; Full Cirlce Gallery, Karachi; and 39k Gallery, Lahore. His art practice explores, in the widest sense, the human being’s inability to identify with the structures that we, ourselves, created. Ali elaborates: “My work takes as its starting point the contradiction between our distrust of social structures and our desire to fit into them.”

Ali’s sculptural installation for the Karachi Biennale 2017 creates a visual metaphor representing the rigid social structures in which we inhabit in our daily existence, by constructing a cage-like cubic structure from crutches, a symbol of the commonplace. Ali’s choice to use crutches to create this structure, not only symbolizes the commonplace; it represents the injurious nature of these societally-dictated structures on our psyche, capturing the sense of inadequacy that we feel when confronting these clearly defined societal and cultural boundaries and norms. The paradox embedded in Ali’s work is that whilst we need the crutches to remain standing, they prevent our free-mobility; a manifestation of our purgatorial reliance on, and resentment of, societal structures.