Lala Rukh

Rupak

Artwork Details

Artist

Lala Rukh

Title

Rupak

Date

2016

Medium

Video

Dimensions

6’ 12’’

Credit Line

Art Jameel Collection

Work Description

The taal with a seven-beat cycle, common in South Asian music, is both the inspiration and structure for Lala’s work, titled Rupak. The video work reveals itself two-fold: one-part a study of music and drawing, one-part culmination. The first part comprises of 88 drawings made by Lala for the film, meant to be seen in a linear sequence, whose order is as critical as it would be in musical notation. The second consists of the animation of the drawings played to the original recording of the sound, worked out in collaboration with a musician, specialising in the tabla (percussion instrument). Turning drawing into movement, the animation renders the expansion of the beat in time and creates a visual relationship with the pulsing of the instrument.

Artist Biography

Lala Rukh studied art at Punjab University, Lahore, Pakistan (MFA) and University of Chicago, Chicago, USA (MFA). She taught for 30 years at Punjab University, Department of Fine Art and the National College of Arts where she set up the MA (Hons) Visual Art Program in the year 2000. After retiring from teaching, Lala Rukh devoted her time in her studio in Lahore and to activism, becoming known as among the foremost feminist activist artists of South Asia.

Rukh exhibited extensively including many solo in Greynoise, (Dubai,2017), Koel Gallery, 2010; National College of Art 2004 ( Pakistan), Galerie Hildebrand (Austria 1981), Maison de la Culture (France 1978).

Useful Links

Artist’s Rooms: Lala Rukh