An Interview with Amna Naqvi

Amna Naqvi’s lifelong love of art, literature and learning has come together in the AAN Foundation, an effort to provide support and platforms for cultural projects related to Asia. Born in Pakistan, Amna and her family now call Hong Kong home, having also lived previously in Indonesia and Singapore. Although contemporary art is a major passion—the AAN Collection is the largest such private assemblage of Pakistani contemporary art—history figures prominently in her interests and in her development as a collector and arts patron. Alexandra Seno talks with Amna about her connection with art. 

Alexandra Seno Amna, can you tell us about the AAN Foundation?

Amna Naqvi It was formed out of the need to formalize the patronage and funding of the arts that my husband Ali and I had been engaged in for over a decade. Institutions were already aware that we were funding projects and exhibitions. To give you an example, we were approached for Shahzia Sikander’s show in 2009, which we supported at the Para Site art space in Hong Kong; Green Cardamom contacted us for the international group exhibition ‘Lines of Control’ at the Johnson Museum at Cornell in Ithaca in 2012, and Asia Society in New York got in touch for the show on company painting titled ‘Princes and Painters in Mughal Delhi’ in 2012. The foundation is a vehicle to provide artists, curators, art historians and students with access to funding, space and support for realization of their projects and ideas. These are not just blockbuster exhibitions like Shahzia Sikander’s ‘Apparatus of Power’ at Asia Society in Hong Kong in 2016, but include smaller and perhaps more challenging projects as well.

AS Where did the foundation’s name come from?

AN ‘AAN’ in contemporary Urdu means ‘honour’; in formal Urdu it means ‘moment’. We ourselves primarily collect contemporary art, and therefore ‘moment’ had a resonance—we are honoured to be able to capture this moment as we engage in collecting the narratives of this particular time. AAN is also composed of the initials of both our names. My husband and I gave it a great deal of thought. It could have been the Naqvi Foundation, but we wanted a name that would capture the essence of the collection. Both the foundation and Gandhara-Art— our project space and contemporary art gallery in Karachi, which we established in 2005—came about because of our own collecting.

Amna Naqvi and Oyster, 2015
Oyster: by Naiza Khan (b. 1968), 2014
Bronze, 28 x 28 x 13 cm
AAN Collection
(Image courtesy of AAN Collection & Sakshi Verma Photography)

AS So before AAN there was already Gandhara-Art. Why did you call it that?

AN It was named after the ancient Buddhist Gandharan civilization, which flourished in the north of present-day Pakistan. Its art forms were a synthesis of South Asian and Hellenistic art. I was drawn to it as a name for the gallery because I had visited one of the sites as a child—I grew up in Karachi, and on a family trip up north our father took us to Taxila. I was very interested in Greek and Roman mythology, and Gandhara seemed a perfect synthesis. I could almost find Apollo in the Buddha! I found the link important and felt that Gandharan art seemed to be the flowering of an interesting art tradition in the subcontinent.

AS What are your memories of that visit to Taxila?

AN I have a picture of my father, my sister and myself sitting near one of the stupas and one with my mother in the gardens of the museum. I remember walking around the site and imagining the people who once lived there. Everything was so beautifully proportioned that it appealed to me, even as a 10-year-old. At the museum we saw all these beautiful sculptures—I was very moved by them. 

AS Did you take this kind of trip with your father often?

AN Yes. As my father was interested in history, we would visit historical sites wherever we went. In Lahore at the museum there is a Gandharan sculpture titled the ‘Fasting Siddhartha’, which is one of the most beautiful sculptures I have ever seen. My husband’s favourite sculpture is the ‘Fasting Siddhartha’ as well! A specialist in Western sculpture once told me that if the world was ending and he could save only ten sculptures, he would save the ‘Fasting Siddhartha’. But you must stand before it to realize how perfect it is. Thanks to technology, though, you can now see it on the Google Cultural Institute platform for the Lahore Museum.

 AS Have you taken your children to see it?

AN Yes, and they love it too. We have a few Gandharan sculptures at home, which we bought in New York at auction. When one of my daughters—she was very young at the time—first saw one, she said: ‘How come it looks like a Pakistani man? Why doesn’t it look Chinese?’ My children were born and grew up in Singapore and Hong Kong, so for them, anything Buddhist should be Chinese. I told her: ‘It’s because of where the Buddha was born.’ I have taken my children to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to see the Gandharan sculptures there as well.

The bodhisattva Siddhartha
Gandhara, 2nd/3rd century
Grey schist, height 70 cm
AAN Collection
(Image courtesy of Sotheby’s)

AS Can you tell us more about the operation of the gallery?

 AN Gandhara-Art funds publications, projects and a robust exhibitions programme which includes not-for-profit exhibitions in Hong Kong and Karachi. When we started, no one showed contemporary Pakistani art in Hong Kong. It was being shown in London and New York, but otherwise, the farthest east it was exhibited was India, and very minimally beyond. But I thought it would have real resonance in Hong Kong, and the gallery has exhibited the works of Imran Qureshi, Aisha Khalid and Khadim Ali here to great acclaim.

In fact, our art space in Pakistan has now taken on a life of its own. Ten years ago, ten people would come to see an exhibition, whereas now almost two hundred come just to an opening, and an even greater number to the exhibition. All the shows we hold are international-quality exhibitions of a longer duration, like six to eight weeks. I don’t think anyone else has shown a six-channel projection in Pakistan or let artists punch holes in the gallery space or created installations with mounds of earth and sand. I want the artists to tell their stories unhindered. The gallery operates as a quasi-museum, and we borrow work from other collections to complete the stories the artists want to tell.

 AS You’ve worked with many important Pakistani contemporary artists. Can you tell us about the links to tradition in their work?

AN Shahzia Sikander, Imran Qureshi and Aisha Khalid were trained as miniaturists. Whatever they create—a video installation, a needle going through a textile, an abstract expressionist painting—is derivative of the practice they are rooted in and therefore from the tradition of the miniature. It’s part of their DNA, that training. What they do is tied to a centuries-old tradition. When I look at the work of someone like Rashid Rana or Bani Abidi, whose media are photography, video and sound, I see that their practices are tied to tradition as well. Bani Abidi has created a sound installation which features women singing about loss and separation as their men go away to war, in this case the soldiers from the Punjab who fought in Europe on behalf of the British Empire in World War I. These may be stories of a century ago, but the songs would in fact have been passed down from generation to generation over several centuries. This sound installation was featured at the Edinburgh Art Festival last year. One of my favourite works by Rashid Rana is titled Re-Ornamented, and is a digital image composed of a multitude of tiny images of utilitarian mobile phone cards, which come together to create an image of the 17th century tomb of the Mughal emperor Jahangir in Lahore. A conversation with tradition appears even if it is a comment on urbanization and its contemporary concerns. 

Everything and Nothing
By Rashid Rana (b. 1968), 2011
LightJet print + Diasec, each: 206 x 305 cm
AAN Collection
(Image courtesy of Rashid Rana Studio) 

AS The AAN Collection features a mix of Gandharan sculptures, Indian miniatures, and modern and contemporary works. What is your basis for developing the collection? 

AN I could view it linearly, but I would rather look at it as concentric circles, where the heart is contemporary Pakistani art. There are certain artists we collect in depth, such as Shahzia Sikander, Imran Qureshi, Rashid Rana, Naiza Khan, Khadim Ali, Adeel uz Zafar, Aisha Khalid, Bani Abidi and Faiza Butt. We have their newer work, but also older pieces to fill in the gaps. It’s all about the stories they tell. Outside of the contemporary, there is the modern art of Sadequain, Ismail Gulgee, Anna Molka Ahmed, F. N. Souza, S. H. Raza, Zahoor ul Akhlaq, Ali Imam, M. F. Husain, Jamil Naqsh and Ahmed Pervez, which gives context to the contemporary, and beyond that is the historic work—sculptures, miniatures. The contemporary works outnumber everything else. I have seven or eight Gandharan sculptures and maybe fifteen or twenty miniature paintings, including Shah Abbas Receiving the Mughal Mission at Isfahan, which is believed to have been in the collection of Warren Hastings, who was Governor-General of India from 1772 to 1785. These help inform what is in the heart of the collection.

AS You are also passionate about literature.

AN Yes, I am very fond of literature. There are a lot of works in the collection that are text-based. I’m drawn to works of art with poetry at its core. It could be a video installation such as Parallax by Shahzia Sikander, a painted miniature album using decorated lining paper by Aisha Khalid, a painting by Sadequain based on the poetry of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, or text-based works by Aisha Abid Hussain and Fazal Rizvi. This collecting all stems from an interest in words as well as the art. I read everything. 

AS How many works does the collection contain?

AN Over 800, I believe.

AS You lend to the Met, the Guimet and the Singapore Art Museum, among other institutions. How do you feel about the way Pakistani art is being received internationally?

AN We have been lending works from the collection for over 10 years now. I know some collectors don’t like to part with their works and send them out on loans, but we have never said ‘no’. For the artist who is trying to tell a story, sometimes that one work is critical. The works help audiences gain a deeper understanding. For example, with Imran Qureshi’s Roof Garden commission for The Metropolitan Museum of Art, viewers first see the commission and then go down to see miniature paintings by the same artist, which provides context. It creates a deeper understanding for those who know the artist’s work, and for those who don’t, it opens a door. A great deal can happen once the door is opened.

Shah Abbas Receiving the Mughal Mission at Isfahan
India, Lucknow or Faizabad, late 18th/early 19th century
Opaque watercolour and gold on paper, 40.5 x 27.3 cm
AAN Collection
(Image courtesy of Sotheby’s)

AS You also have a new project, which is something of a departure. 

AN Yes—it’s an ongoing series of publications called SCROLL—Projects on Paper. The project’s curator, Aziz Sohail, came up with the idea, and as soon as he told me about it, it clicked. We had a show at Gandhara-Art called ‘How We Mark the Land’, which was about cartography and how imaginary lines have created new nations. The idea for Scroll was that there would be new works of art specifically created for it, which would only have a manifestation on paper. It’s the concept of taking art away from the museum, the gallery, so the exhibition and the art exist only on paper. This connects to the tradition of miniature painting, where one looked through a miniature album and was able to view an exhibition in one’s hands. Like in China, where a scholar would take a scroll from a shelf in his home, unroll it, and examine it with great deliberation. It is about viewing paper as an alternative space for visual art. We plan to do four such ‘exhibitions’ a year. 

AS How has living in East Asia shaped your engagement with art?

AN I met collectors here who told Ali and me to be bold, to not shy away from works that would be difficult to maintain or from large works that we could not show at home. That was a very important lesson. We were among the first Pakistani collectors to collect video voraciously. In general, education and health are the main beneficiaries in philanthropy, and that’s what we were focusing on. But then we realized that the spirit needs nurturing as well.

I’ve always lived in cities by the sea or on islands— areas which are open to more ideas. In that way, our collecting and philanthropy have been informed by the sea. Cities by the sea are not just about the movement of trade and commerce—they are about the movement of ideas. 

Alexandra Seno is Head of Development at the independent non-profit Asia Art Archive. She is also a writer and a culture critic who has been published by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, The Art Newspaper and Architectural Record. She serves on the executive board of The Oriental Ceramic Society of Hong Kong and as an adviser to Spring Workshop. She lives in Hong Kong. 

This article first featured in our March/ April 2017 print issue. To read more, purchase the full issue here.

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