Suleman Aqeel Khilji (b. 1985) lives and works in Lahore. Khilji was selected for a student exchange program to Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris (2009). He received his BFA from National College of Art, Lahore (2011). Selected artist residencies include Vasl Single Artist Residency (2016), Murree Museums Artist Residency (2016). Solo exhibitions include: See View at lVS Gallery, Karachi, Landswept; lnayat and Others. Sanat Gallery, Karachi. Selected international exhibitions include: Pahore, Ecole de Beaux Art. Paris, Second Glance/Double Take, SOAS, London. He recently exhibited at Fakir Khana Museum, as part of Foundation Art Divvy’s exhibition, I, too, am a part of this history, a collateral to LB01, the Lahore Biennale (2018). Khilji’s works are part of prestigious collections such as DlL Foundation New York, Shahrukh Khan’s Art Collection, and Luciano Benetton Collection."LANDSWEPT describes a place or places where everything, both material and immaterial, has been brushed aside, purloined, swept away, blown down, irrigated off, everything except the touchable earth." -John Berger Ever since I was a child, I have been travelling all around Baluchistan. I have always been struck by the vast diversity in cultures, faces, landscapes and languages in this province.
Journeys play an important role in my compositions. I am intrigued by transitional landscapes and the characters that I meet during these journeys between Quetta and Lahore and just seeing the tribal locals travelling by bus or train. In my new body of work, Another View and Landscape with Floating Objects, I have tried to locate the dislocated; identify the feeling of displacement. These floating objects shown in a transitional landscape are the anomalies of culture, religion and commercialisation in the natural human environment.
I have been examining the process of painting and how a figure is continuously moving in a transitional space; a transitional space of a drawing, watercolour and oil on linen. The process of art making transforms into a discovery of meaning through suggestions not statements. The presented body of work is based on found objects. Objects as drawings or drawings as objects, Objects from a future memory. How these objects could be seen in relevant spaces, in future.
