FEMINIST PAINTERS DURING PAKISTAN’S MILITARY DICTATORSHIP (1977-1988)

My current research in progress recovers the little known but hugely consequential movement of female artists who opposed Pakistan’s military dictatorship. In 1977, General Zia ul-Haq staged a coup, reshaping Pakistan into a military dictatorship. Fearing violence if they openly resisted, Zia's opponents turned to the arts. For male artists, Lahore's Pak Tea House nurtured protest poetry, literature, and visual arts, while female artists were excluded from the cafe and thereby movements against the dictatorship. Female artists resisted this double exclusion, from public life under dictatorship and from the male-dominated art scene. Their expressions became the most globally resonant protest against the dictatorship. So much so, that while researching at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Museum and Library, I uncovered CIA reports contending that female artists exhibiting in New York and London were a threat to regime stability in Pakistan.

Even though female painters constituted the most visible (and viable) resistance, there has yet to be an academic monograph on their artistic and feminist movement. Recently, historians have begun writing about the Zia period, but little of this new work focuses on the visual arts in resistance against dictatorship, nor on the role of women. This book is the first academic book examining how the female-led visual arts movement became the most globally visible opposition against the Zia military dictatorship. The implications of this research will help those interested in democracy better understand the role of women and the visual arts in movements against dictatorship. This is a timely topic as authoritarian movements around the world have restricted women’s rights while also igniting feminist movements.