Biography
Artist, activist and pedagogue Lala Rukh (1948–2017) produced her drawing, printmaking, photography and video works against the backdrop of political turmoil and feminist movements in Pakistan. Depicting horizons, lunar movements, bodies of water, coastlines and archaeological sites, her poetic compositions capture a gradient of rhythms through a pared-down vocabulary of lines, ciphers and blackness. Her practice was deeply influenced by calligraphy and Hindustani classical music, a genre she became familiar with owing to her close association with the All Pakistan Music Conference, initiated by her father Hayat Ahmad Khan in 1959. Lala Rukh received an MFA from Punjab University (1970) and an MFA from the University of Chicago (1976). She taught for 30 years at Punjab University’s Department of Fine Art and the National College of Arts where she established the MA (Hons) Visual Art Programme in 2000. She also co-founded Women’s Action Forum (1981), Simorgh (1985), a women’s resource and publication centre in Lahore, and Vasl Artists Trust (2000).
