Lahore Talkies

Lahore Talkies: Ahsan Javaid and Hamid Ali Hanbhi

Ahsan Javaid and Hamid Ali Hanbhi are both graduates of the National College of Arts in Lahore, drawing deeply on their immediate surroundings and social realities in their city. Borrowing from the language of cinema and finding new possibilities in visual storytelling, both artists bring Lahore to life through the intersection of various narrative techniques. Both artists work at the juncture of multiple materials and practices; drawing, painting, and textile work in conjunction to evoke the multisensory experience of film. The artists take on questions of patriarchal power and sociopolitical uncertainty, in powerful and wholly original aesthetic modes.

In Ahsan Javaid’s paintings, stories are constantly intersecting. Over beautifully rendered urban scenes and landscapes, other stories hover in the form of drawing. National tragedies–missing persons, political violence–hover over the scenes like a second skin. And yet the beauty of Lahore and its poetic spirit prevail, and Ahsan is able to provide a complex, aesthetically striking portrait of place in deep flux.

In Hamid Ali Hanbhi’s paintings, the language of cinema appears to navigate the complicated sociopolitical landscape of Pakistan. Patriarchal power, climate change, and political violence coexist with the epic landscape of his country. Deliberately evoking the format of a film still, the works are materially grounded, using textile and a deeply painterly composition to reimagine the experience of a cinematic moment.

At the forefront of the artistic community in Lahore, these artists are also close friends and collaborators, bringing a specific spirit of creativity in Pakistan to Los Angeles. Both artists speak the language of cinema, a natural spark for dialogue between South Asia and Southern California.

Working with found images from movies, my work deals with the re-narration of certain visuals. Movies, which consist of running images where each single frame doesn’t remain for long in front of us, serve as a source for my image-making practice—one that revolves around freezing a moment and generating new meaning from it. The subject matter in my work ranges from political imagery to love scenes, from violent war images to poetic landscapes of a world yet to be adventured.

Beyond the stillness of the frame, my practice also engages with materiality—placing visuals on surfaces are not merely a support but active participants in generation of context. The interplay between image and material allows for a layered dialogue, where power structures, ecological tensions, and cultural memory converge.

For me, the selection of certain images and the dialogue between film stills is the most compelling aspect: it allows me to relive distant locations and histories through the very act of painting.

AHSAN JAVAID

My practice explores the intersections of identity, memory, and power, engaging with how histories are constructed, obscured, and remembered. I am particularly drawn to the gaps and silences within collective narratives, examining how power operates within visual culture and materiality, shaping what is preserved and what fades from view.

This body of work was informed by socio-political literary texts that serve as entry points for visual exploration. Rather than directly translating or illustrating the text, my process fosters a dialogue between language and image. The texts I engage with provide a loose framework, carrying layers of meaning, history, and memories. I work with found imagery from print media and digital archives, using painting, drawing, and collage as my primary layering devices. Through deconstruction and reassembly, I shape compositions where fragmented histories, collective memory, and lived experience converge into fluid, evolving forms of visual storytelling. The process of cutting, layering, and recomposing mirrors the fluidity of historical memory—how events are recalled, altered, or reframed across time and space. Figures emerge and recede, gestures interrupt and intertwine, creating compositions that resist linear narratives and invite multiple readings.