Born 1955, Lahore; lives and works in Lahore

A Book of Imaginary Companions
2008
Mixed medium on paper
H. 8 1/4 x W. 5 1/2 in. (21 x 14 cm)
Collection of the artist
Image courtesy of Malcolm Neil Hutcheson

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The Principle of Delicacy
2002
Acrylic on board
H. 36 x W. 48 in. (91.4 x 121.9 cm)
Collection of Murlidhar Dawani
Image courtesy of the artist

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I Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual is the true story of a seventeen-years-old Frenchman who was arrested and kept in concentration camps by German forces in World War II. He had made the mistake of reporting a theft that had occurred in a gay area of town. The police added his name to a list of suspected homosexuals, which soon fell into German hands.

Drawing images of love, pleasure, and decadence was the way I went on to relate with the story, which is more about pain, torture, and humiliation. But the actual purpose of creating these drawings was to get pleasure, pleasure of somebody’s physical presence, in some space in my mind and on the pages of this book.

In the lonely days after the third surgery on my right arm, there were no real nude references available to me. I was mostly relying on an underwear catalogue, images of swimmers and wrestlers in a sports magazine, friends who would occasionally model for me, and the mirror in my room, so one can say that the characters in my drawings are constructed by taking different bits of body parts from different sources.