The Unfolding II - Cosmopolitan Art Magazine Pakistan

A New Generation Unfolds

Fresh Perspectives, Fearless Exploration

Satrang Gallery welcomes a dynamic showcase of emerging talent in The Unfolding II, a group exhibition bringing together forty exceptionally promising young artists from across Pakistan.

Representing diverse regions, backgrounds and artistic practices, the exhibition moves from intricate craftsmanship to thought-provoking concepts. Each artist brings a distinct language, yet the works meet in a shared spirit of curiosity, skill and experimentation.

Across painting, miniature, printmaking, textiles, sculpture and mixed media, personal worlds meet cultural reflection. Memory, identity, nature, resilience, vulnerability and transformation surface in practices that feel both intimate and urgently contemporary.

“This is more than a group exhibition; it is a glimpse into the future of Pakistani contemporary art.”

ExhibitionThe Unfolding II - By Emerging Artists

Director / CuratorAsma Rashid Khan

Assistant CuratorsFatima Maqbool and Noor ul Hudda

VenueSatrang Gallery, Islamabad Serena Hotel

OpeningTuesday, August 4, 2026 - 6:00 to 8:00 pm

Published byCosmopolitan Art Magazine Team

Director's Note

The Future of Pakistani Art

Director and curator Asma Rashid Khan describes the exhibition as a celebration of accomplished expression at an early stage in the artists' journeys. The works offer glimpses into personal worlds, cultural reflections and imaginative realms that expand the boundaries of contemporary practice.

The strength of the exhibition lies in its plurality. Rather than proposing a single definition of emerging art, it creates room for many voices, materials and ways of seeing to unfold together.

Participating artists in The Unfolding II with featured artwork

Forty Emerging Voices

Across Pakistan, Across Practices

The exhibition gathers artists whose practices explore memory, folklore, domestic spaces, ecology, childhood, borders, identity, care and the emotional traces carried by bodies and objects.

Abdul Haleem Sabir, Abdul Rafeh, Abdul Rahman, Abeeha Imran, Aisha Yousaf, Aiza Noor, Amna Wajahat, Aneeka Khan, Athar Raza Changezi, Bakhtawar Naqvi, Barira Khan, Bhawna Kumari, Faheem Faisal, Faiza Taufique, Faizan Afzal, Fizza Imran, Hamza Panhwar, Insia Mehdi, Ishma Fahim, Jannat Rana, Khushboo Junejo, Laiba Masood, Maira Anjum, Mahnoor Ali Gilani, Marwah Waqar, Mishal Mahsud, Muhammad Bilal, Muntazir Mehdi, Mugeet Haider, Pervez Uddin, Rabia Nasir, Shehrbano Naqvi, Tabsheer Azmat, Tayyba Idress, Yahya Khan, Yumna Dar, Zainab Sabir, Zarish Nadeem, Zuha Khan and Zukhruf Farooq.

Curatorial Reading

What the Exhibition Holds Together

Read curatorially, The Unfolding II is less a single statement than a field of connected concerns. Traditional processes are not treated as fixed inheritance; they are stretched, interrupted and made responsive to contemporary life. Across the exhibition, material becomes a way of thinking.

Memory as Material

Paper, archives, domestic objects and bodily gestures hold what time cannot preserve intact. Memory appears as something partial, unstable and continually remade.

Tradition in Motion

Miniature painting, wasli, etching and weaving enter conversation with psychology, ecology, gender and migration. Technique becomes a living language rather than a boundary.

Fragile Futures

Nature, childhood, animal life and the built environment recur as vulnerable sites. Yet the exhibition finds resilience in care, experimentation and imagining differently.

Selected Artist Practices

Eight Ways of Seeing

This selection does not rank the artists. It traces several of the exhibition's strongest conversations and offers Cosmo's editorial response to works documented in the exhibition catalogue.

Abdul Rafeh

The Static 3, 2025 - Pyrography, leather, acrylic and wire

Rafeh gives physical form to folklore, shadow and quiet fear. Tonal cowhide carries marks of life while wire armatures allow the work to cast another, immaterial body.

Cosmo Curatorial NoteThe shadow is not an after-effect; it is a second medium. What seems hidden becomes present without ever becoming fully knowable.

Aisha Yousaf

Untitled - Monoprint with leaves and woven paper

Yousaf brings textile knowledge into experimental printmaking, imprinting organic forms and then weaving the paper. Fragments become structure, linking heritage with transformation.

Cosmo Curatorial NoteWeaving is both action and argument: separate impressions gain strength by crossing one another. The work proposes connection as renewal.

Aiza Noor

A Shrine for Silence, 2026 - Watercolour, oxidised silver leaf and gouache on wasli

Noor uses the beauty and precision of miniature painting to address suffering concealed beneath ornament, cultural elegance and silence.

Cosmo Curatorial NoteThe shrine form makes looking feel devotional, but oxidised silver unsettles that beauty. The surface attracts us before asking what elegance may hide.

Faizan Afzal

The Quiet Within, 2025 - Gouache on wasli

Growing from memories of Gilgit-Baltistan, Afzal's “water stories” connect landscape with fear, healing and personal history. Water becomes carrier and transformer.

Cosmo Curatorial NoteThe intimacy of gouache on wasli meets the scale of landscape and memory. The result feels suspended between submergence and recovery.

Fizza Imran

Echoes in the Oil / The Cost of Scales, 2025 - Gouache on wasli

Imran turns miniature painting toward animal welfare, captivity and neglect, asking viewers to recognise animals as sentient beings rather than commodities.

Cosmo Curatorial NotePrecision becomes an ethics of attention. Close looking resists the distance that allows exploitation to remain unseen.

Yahya Khan

Untitled, 2026 - Wood and metal, 8.5 x 2.3 feet

Khan joins real branches with metal to create a forced, uneasy growth. Organic direction meets an imposed industrial logic that begins to reshape it.

Cosmo Curatorial NoteThe sculpture makes environmental pressure bodily. Metal redirects the branch, turning human intervention into visible tension.

Zuha Khan

Whispers on the Window, 2026 - Oil on canvas

Khan addresses childhood trauma and systemic neglect through nostalgic illustration, fogged surfaces and restrained imagery rather than graphic representation.

Cosmo Curatorial NoteThe softness is not an escape from difficulty. It protects the child's presence while allowing emotional weight to surface.

Zukhruf Farooq

Afternoon That Stayed, 2026 - Oil on canvas

Farooq works from personal and family archives to examine intimacy, loss and inherited memory. Obscured figures shift meaning toward posture, proximity and gesture.

Cosmo Curatorial NoteAbsence becomes spatial rather than empty. What cannot be fully recovered may still survive as atmosphere and bodily knowledge.