The Department of Fine Art offers a comprehensive program designed to enhance students’ artistic growth across three disciplines: 2D, 3D, and Multimedia. This integrated approach combines studio practice, theoretical studies, and personal/professional development, fostering intellectual and aesthetic responses within a global framework. The department acknowledges the diverse social, political, cultural, economic, and technological contexts that influence contemporary art, encouraging students to incorporate this multidimensionality into their work. The department has been led by renowned academics, including Noorjehan Bilgrami, Naiza Khan, Asma Mundrawala, Usman Ghouri, Rashid Arshad, and Adeela Suleman, whose artist research has significantly contributed to the department’s evolution.

Art South Asia Project (ASAP) is a UK-based, non-profit arts education and development platform, established in 2021. We support the infrastructure of modern and contemporary visual and applied arts in South Asia by facilitating and expanding regional and international networks of collaboration and research. ASAP fosters regional partnerships between the countries of Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Working between South Asia and the UK, we offer grants and create opportunities for engagement through collaborative programmes focused on research, archiving, and publications. We also promote professional development through workshops, talks, symposia, and fellowships, highlighting the narratives and histories of South Asian art.

Co-Directors

Veera Rustomji is an artist from Karachi, Pakistan. Her practice takes reference from stories and archives creating scenarios that deal with gender, geographical power structures and religious iconography. She holds a BFA from the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture and an MA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Arts at the University of the Arts London (UAL). She is a recipient of the UAL Postgraduate International Scholarship Award and the Mead Fellowship. Alongside her visual art practice, she teaches at the Fine Art Department of IVS.

Seher Naveed, a Karachi-based artist with over a decade of experience in visual arts and academia, explores the socio-political development of urban environments and its impact on daily life. Her work delves into architecture as a reflection of societal aspirations, especially in cities grappling with political instability. Seher earned a BFA from the Indus Valley School of Art & Architecture, Karachi and an MA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, University of the Arts London. Currently, she is Associate Professor at the Indus Valley School of Art & Architecture, where she teaches courses in drawing and painting.

Archive Assistant

Dua Rabay is a visual artist based in Pakistan. She received her BFA, majoring in Painting and Printmaking from the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture in 2019 and was awarded the Abu Shamim Arif Award for the Best Research Paper. Dua has exhibited in multiple groups across Karachi, Lahore, New York, Mexico, Finland, and Chicago. She attended the Summer Residency Project at the School of Visual Arts, New York, in the summer of 2020. Her recent solo exhibition was at the CICA Museum in Gimpo, South Korea.

In August 2024, the URA team reached out to 114 fine art graduates from 2013 to 2023, selecting them based on their thesis projects that examined urbanism in both direct and indirect ways. So far, 82 graduates have responded, sharing documentation of their thesis projects and research. Almost all the content received has been documented by the graduates themselves, resulting in a wide range of submissions. While some provided comprehensive resources, others submitted more minimal material, depending on what they were able to preserve and had access to in the last decade.

What we found particularly interesting is the evolution of technology in our collection of archives. Recent graduates have managed to produce high-quality documentation using just smartphones, whereas earlier graduates often relied on more complex equipment like DSLR cameras or low quality cell phone cameras. The Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture is indeed a ‘young’ art school, established in 1989 and within just 35 graduating batches, we can observe significant contrasts in student work. This not only highlights advancements in technologies but also reveals the evolving approaches to documenting art over the years.

The URA homepage uses drawing as a point of convergence, incorporating motifs derived from various student projects featured in the archive. The use of colour and pattern suggests both continuity and adaptation, paralleling the complex, urban landscape of Karachi, where growth and transformation occur in parallel, often shaping and sometimes disrupting or negating one another. The motifs used in the drawing reflect themes such as distance, hierarchies, order, and disorder, concepts central to the archive’s exploration of the city’s complexities. The composition deliberately questions the linear organisation of traditional archives, disrupting conventional methods of categorisation to mirror the multifaceted and often chaotic realities of Karachi. This non-linear approach is intended to engage viewers in rethinking how archives are structured and invite them to experience the city’s vibrant and ever-changing nature through a more fluid, interconnected lens. The imagery in the drawing is sourced from the thesis projects of Aswad Anees (2021), Axel Lucas (2022), Alizeh Ghaffar (2021), Adan Shaikh (2022), Hamda Imran (2023), Mashaal Khan (2021), and Lujane Pagganwala (2019).