A historic first for Pakistan: the global biennial community will gather in Lahore as the city opens its fourth Biennale, The Shape of Coexistence, curated by Nav Haq, opening on 27 March 2027.
This programme recognises the challenges of curating in this anxious century and invites curatorial practitioners to claim this work as an act of courage - as an interlocutor for eminent, emerging and marginal voices in the Arts. In a moment when curatorial practice demands interdisciplinary fluency and imagining new constellations to advance local discourse, The Lahore Biennale Foundation's training and development programme “The Thing Is: Expanding Curatorial Proficiency” serves as a vital intervention. Running from the Fall of 2025 and commencing in Spring 2026, with a series of special exhibits and public programming, this initiative is designed to facilitate emerging curatorial voices and its professional practice within Pakistan. Our present cohort of Curatorial Fellows form a diverse group of practitioners, ... More
As the closing program of the third edition of the Lahore Biennale, the Climate Congress extends the histories and research developed as part of the main exhibition by convening a mix of leading and emerging researchers, artists, curators, and other practitioners for conversations, discussions, and workshops. Developed under the direction of Iftikhar Dadi and John Tain, the Congress offers an occasion for South-South conversations around the role of the arts and humanities to meaningfully contribute to wider efforts to generate awareness and support for imagining and future sustainable futures.
The Youth Forum initiative of the Lahore Biennale Foundation (LBF) actively engages with younger audiences that include in-school and out-of-school children, through public and private sector schools from across Lahore. The Youth Forum is a free educational resource and community-building program that aims for inclusion beyond socio-economic boundaries. LBF works with different institutional partners. The objectives of Youth Forum are to encourage creativity and develop critical thinking skills, as students experience art beyond their screens and textbooks. Students interact with maps, architecture, and exhibition design, and develop experiential and imaginative learning.
A historic first for Pakistan: the global biennial community will gather in Lahore as the city opens its fourth Biennale, The Shape of Coexistence, curated by Nav Haq, opening on 27 March 2027.
With great pride, LBF marks a significant milestone as the Green School Certification Program (GSCP) concludes its pilot phase. The program seeks critical thinking and whole systems learning on climate education through art and education, especially in the context of the Global South. The project functions parallel to the academic curriculum, empowering the next generation of eco-citizens through advocacy of long-term sustainable practices at community level. It supports a circular system of government bodies, educational institutions, and private and social sector entities that come together to affect intergenerational transfer of climate-aware knowledge and practice.
A discussion with Zoya Siddiqui and Farwa Hassan. At the first ever artSPEAK event, emerging artists Zoya Siddiqui and Farwa Hassan were invited to share their experience as the recipients of the Theertha Performance Platform Award, and to expand upon how their practice related to performance art. The talk took place at Gallery 39K on June 8, 2015. Zoya Siddiqui, a visual artist, is a recent Beaconhouse National University graduate based in Lahore. Farwa Hassan graduated from the Beaconhouse National University in 2014 and has showcased her works in Lahore and Islamabad. Zoya Siddiqui, a visual artist, is a recent Beaconhouse National University ... More
The 2018 Award recognizes the life and work of Pakistan’s eminent artist and social activist Lala Rukh (1948-2017)
Stolon Press’s Hustle Culture is a record made of the daily life around three bird baths placed under a chaste tree and a tamarind tree, in a small garden, in a small town in Malaysia. The visitors to the baths vary—sunbirds, fantails, swallows, an occasional tailorbird, maybe even a kingfisher or oriole, a toad, as well the neighborhood’s fat cat. The baths are washed and refilled regularly, sometimes there are no visitors at all, save for a floating feather; the camera is too slow or too fast, too impatient, or badly positioned. Instead of a story or plot, there is rhythm, fluttering, ... More
The Afforestation Lahore Group is designed to encourage a collaborative and multidisciplinary approach amongst the fields of art and philanthropy in Pakistan which focuses on supporting research and development – by building relationships with private, government, institutional and corporate partners, both at domestic and international levels. Climate change presents a tangible threat and given its severity it is imperative to have all stakeholders united on one single platform. It is hoped that with this initiative ... More
The Lahore Biennale Foundation (LBF) is committed to fostering sustainable practices through its Zero Waste Initiative, aimed at reducing the environmental footprint of our projects and daily operations. As part of this commitment, we have implemented a comprehensive waste management system that emphasizes recycling, repurposing, and responsible disposal methods.
Manduva is an exploration of seven and a half decades of Pakistani cinema. An attempt to initiate archiving and reading of indigenous cinematic syntax. Pakistan has loved and owned it sometimes but also hated and abandoned it intermittently. It’s part of Pakistan’s heritage and this component attempts to reclaim it, inspect, dissect and interpret.
The Lahore-based Awami Art Collective, a group of cultural practitioners, were invited to speak about their aim of bringing art to public spaces and why they considered such interventions to be of importance. Their ethos of celebrating diversity and enabling peaceful co-existence in a pluralist society particularly aligns them with the Lahore Biennale Foundation’s (LBF) own mission. The conversation covered the history of the collective as well as their recent projects and concerns, in order to reflect upon the context in which art can meaningfully engage with public space. The event was held at The Last Word on August 10, ... More
Announced in Summer 2018, the LBF Research Grant was intended for an individual or collective whose research focuses on movements and shifts in modern and contemporary art practice in Pakistan or its diaspora.
Gleaners Notebook, an A5 format notebook specially produced for LB03, takes as its point of departure the small-scale workshops that produce the bulk of exercise books for the city’s many students. The printers employ older paper ruling machines that use inked thread to line the sheets, and require some degree of manual labor. As part of the process, accidents or off-registered paper are generated during warm up and slow down. Made from these castoffs, the Gleaners Notebook emerges out of Yang’s longstanding practice of transforming school exercise books, diaries, and other such vernacular printed matter into artist publications. In doing ... More
Between Jan 26 and Feb 29, 2020, the Lahore Biennale 02 was exhibited at multiple sites across Lahore, Pakistan. Hoor Al Qasimi curated the work of over eighty artists and collectives under the theme of Between The Sun And The Moon, emphasizing participation from the Global South and with a stress on artists and works from Africa, Central Asia, West Asia and their diasporas. The multifaceted Biennale program included exhibited works, performances, participatory settings, publications ... More