Wallflower: New Works by Jovita Alvares
The Imran Mir Art Foundation presents ‘Wallflower’, a solo exhibition by the winner of the second cycle of the Imran Mir Art Prize, Jovita Alvares. The Imran Mir Art Foundation encourages and promotes young artists of Pakistan, true to the legacy of the late artist Imran Mir.
Alvares’s practice distills multiple ideas from her background and context, drawing inspiration and impetus from the urban spaces of Karachi. Her thesis project strategically deployed montage, collage, and constructivism, creating works that rendered the spatial present layered across a rich historical context. The resulting work drew from both art and architecture, and featured juxtaposed frames referencing the city in ceaseless and dynamic transformation. Her critical relationship to her source material also draws attention to the question of an artist’s responsibility towards society.
Alvares’s current body of work was developed over the past year and continues to address her earlier concerns and techniques through new tropes. This body of work explores the bougainvillea as a metaphor to investigate urban aspirations of beauty, growth and mortality. The bougainvillea as a foreign plant thrives particularly well in the desert climate of Karachi and adds color and cover to the militarized and brown landscape. Contrasting with other local flora which are erased in fast growing city, this flower becomes an apt symbol through which to parse the truths of a rapidly shifting metropolis and our place as citizens of it.
The jury for the Imran Mir Art Prize 2016-17 included Iftikhar Dadi, Simone Wille and Saira Ansari. Aziz Sohail served as the Curatorial Advisor.