Grey Noise gallery in Dubai is opening a solo exhibition dedicated to Pakistani artist Lala Rukh, a key figure in minimalist art and feminist activism in South Asia. Born in Lahore in 1948 and passing away in July 2017, Lala Rukh was a prominent painter, educator, and activist. She co-founded the Women’s Action Forum in 1981 and fought against the discriminatory laws imposed by the military regime of Zia ul-Haq, using art both as a means of political protest and as a tool for collective education. She was arrested during protests against repressive measures and promoted numerous graphic initiatives within her artistic community. Her artistic practice, marked by a meditative and minimalist aesthetic, revolved around time, sound, the expansiveness of spaces such as horizons and bodies of water, and the rhythm of drawing and calligraphy. Her final work, Rupak (2016), an installation combining animation, sound, and eighty-eight drawings inspired by a rhythmic cycle of the tabla, was presented at documenta 14 and acquired by major collections such as the Tate Modern and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Some of her works, including Mirror Image (1997), were acquired by the Metropolitan Museum in 2020.
