Alia, it’s been five years since you where shortlisted for The Sovereign Asian Art Prize. How has your career progressed since 2015? Can you tell us about some new projects you have been working on?

A lot has happened in the last five years, but I have to say that this last year has beat all the odds and I’m sure everyone around the world feels the same way. My husband and I have moved more than once in the last year, across continents and then within Europe as well. It has certainly been an adventure! 2020 got off to a promising start with a really wonderful, and in some ways ground-breaking, Artist in Residence Program I attended – The Trélex Residency in Switzerland, founded and run by Nina Rodin, an inventive and most generous artist. In terms of art making, I have made more work in this last year than I probably have in the previous four years put together! This is because I have never had this much time to focus on my art practice. 

Shortly after I was nominated by my mentor, artist extraordinaire Naiza Khan, shortlisted for The Sovereign Asian Art Prize, I primarily worked on curatorial research projects as Head Curator with Khaas Gallery. In 2016, we participated in two art fairs in London – Art15, Olympia and START Art Fair, Saatchi Gallery. I also independently co-curated Āto Nexus, an Artist’s in Residence program in Tokyo, with designer and artist Ilona Yusuf that culminated in an exhibition at the Pakistan Embassy.

In 2017, I participated in an Artist’s Research Fellowship, From the Scroll to the Book, at the University of Shanghai and exhibited at the International Peace Culture Foundation and Garden Museum in Beijing. Coincidentally, this project was curated by fellow shortlisted artist Farrah Mahmood. The Sovereign Asian Art Prize was therefore the first of many wonderful projects in the Far East that I was fortunate enough to be part of. I then went on to independently curate several projects in Pakistan. In the middle of these curatorial projects, whenever I had snippets of time to myself, I would strive to keep making my own work and managed to keep my studio practice going simultaneously. 

I have also participated in multiple international exhibitions, including in Macedonia, Italy, Berlin, as well as in Pakistan, most of which took place at Koel Gallery. I also have an important project around the corner – my recent work is part of the very first online chapter of the Accessible Art Fair Brussels, spearheaded by Canadian entrepreneur in the arts and curator, Stephanie Manasseh and managed by Salvatore Costantino.

Wow, it’s wonderful to hear how busy you have been and that your work is being appreciated so widely! As winner of The 2014-2015 Public Vote Prize, what did it mean to have such support from the public? 

It meant the world to me and to date, I feel that it is one of the highlights of my artistic career. If I’m completely honest, it came at a point when I was in the thick of working as a curator at a private art gallery, constantly promoting other artists, and as much as I love curatorial research, writing and curating exhibitions, I was getting burnt out by the day-to-day running of the gallery and my own art practice was taking a back seat. To have my own work get the kind of recognition and appreciation that the public vote afforded me was a moment of pure joy that I will always cherish.

It encouraged me to power through and keep my studio practice going. It spurred me on and gave me the motivation to continue doing what I love. Every practitioner has their own priorities but to me, the ultimate moment is when your work resonates enough with someone that they cast a vote in your favour or if they love your art enough to live with it and acquire it. Winning the Prize also gave me the chance to shine a little for my country, as I believe no artist from Pakistan had won the Public Vote Prize up until that point. It also enabled me to travel and exhibit in the Far East for the first time and that is something I hope to be able to do more of in the near future.

Yes, you were actually the first winner from Pakistan in The Prize’s history – paving the way for many other successful Pakistani winners we have had in the past few years. If we can talk about your body of work, tulips seem to be a frequent feature, including in the artwork that won you The 2014-15 Public Vote Prize, ‘Diorama Desire’. What is their significance to you as a subject matter? 

The tulip has indeed become a personal symbol in my art. This is mostly derived from my fascination with its history – how it originated in Turkey and Persia and then found its way to Europe or was appropriated several centuries later. My father and I had a very interesting discussion about this almost a decade ago, a conversation that inspired my first solo exhibition, Tulipmania at Rohtas Gallery, Islamabad in 2011 and ever since then, the concept just clicked and I haven’t looked back!

The tulip sometimes reminds me of my own multicultural life experience, and those of others like me. It was a symbol of love and used in poetry and paintings in the East but came to represent Capitalism in the West, being the first commodity that led to the creation of the stock exchange when “tulip mania” spread all over Europe in the 16th Century. I am interested in this dichotomy, and as fate would have it, like the tulip, I have recently found a home in the Netherlands where the tulip is everywhere and studying its rich history is much more accessible. My research working with the notion of displacement is ongoing; my artwork often expresses a duality – the simultaneous feeling of belonging and of being scattered – that translocation can often bring.

You pose an interesting question when you ask, “how can you make something that nobody has ever made before?” How do you go about finding your inspiration and creating something unique in a world so bombarded with imagery? 

This is a tricky one! It is so easy to become saturated by the overload of imagery all around us, especially digital images that we are faced with every day. Research, writing and expanding on your own ideas are all essential steps in the process of art making. Retaining one’s uniqueness is important, but it is certainly easier said than done.

It is difficult, but perhaps the way to work around this is to fight the urge or the pressure to constantly make something distinctive from scratch and embrace the fact that no matter what we make, it will have some kind of external or internal influence. Channeling this has to do with having the skill to be able to rework something that is already there: something you know already or something you are searching for but it’s more about bringing your own voice to a collective artistic memory. So much of our work is informed by history and images that we have subconsciously absorbed and internalised: by our life experiences that are unique to us, the cultural and/or religious context we are part of or belong to, memories, people we love or have met and have left an impression on us, literature, music or performances we have been moved by and the many great artists before us.

Personally, I feel it is impossible to ignore this collective memory and I feel inspired by it. As long as one is true to oneself and one’s art, the possibilities are endless. Sorry if I have answered your question in a rather abstract way, but I am also still discovering the answers to these questions that I posed myself.

Not at all! It seems like a life-long process to determine one’s artistic style. And throughout your life, it sounds as though your travels have made an important impression on your work. Having grown up between Canada and Pakistan, as well as having studied in the United Kingdom and interned in the United States, where do you feel home is for you? 

Well, at the moment, I am now living in the Netherlands with my better half and we are trying to make this our home! There has been a lot of movement for me throughout my life as well as for my art practice. I like to think of all these places as my home! But if I had to pick one, then it will always be Pakistan – home is where your family is.

Stay up to date with Alia’s upcoming digital project with the Accessible Art Fair Brussels here. 

You can view more of Alia’s work, featured in The Aleph Review, here.

Alia is also active on Instagram, so give her a follow at @aliabilgrami.art or visit her website.