Born in Lahore, Pakistan, Basit Iqbal is a contemporary visual artist currently based in Lahore whose multidisciplinary practice investigates
memory, loss, and the emotional residue embedded within rugs & carpets. Basit completed his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of
the Punjab. Basit Iqbal has exhibited extensively across Pakistan and internationally. His works have been presented at notable art spaces and
galleries including: Pakistan Art Forum (Group Exhibition: Stars of tomorrow, Lahore), The Reservoir (Group Exhibition: Rang Roop Riwayat,
Lahore), Art Soch Contemporary (Group Exhibition: The Summer Show, Lahore), The Reservoir (Group Exhibition: Back on the wall, Lahore),
O Art Space (Group Exhibition: Broadcast Volume 2, Lahore), The Reservoir (Five Persons Exhibition: Weight of the unseen, Lahore), The
COLABS Creative Collective (Group Exhibition: The CCC Mixer x Guerrilla Art Show, Lahore), and ArtScene Gallery (Six Persons Exhibition:
It didn’t go away, Karachi), Curated Frame Art Gallery (Group Exhibition: Boundless Contemporary, UK, United Kingdom), The COLABS KSA
(COLABS Narjis Saudi Arabia, Permanent Collection), O Art Space (Six Persons Exhibition: (Shifting Forms, Lahore) & Muse Art Gallery (Five
Persons Exhibition: Visual Intervals, Lahore) & The Reservoir (Group Exhibition: Macro-ism, Lahore).
His growing international presence includes exhibitions in the United Kingdom (UK) through Curated Frame Art Gallery as part of Boundless
Contemporary. In addition, his work has been featured and acquired for the permanent collection of COLABS Narjis KSA in Saudi Arabia. By
treating rugs and carpets as metaphors for memory, Basit creates compositions that evoke both fragility and endurance, allowing viewers to
engage with the quiet emotional weight carried with both personal reflection & domestic spaces.
“My artworks confront the widely accepted myth that time is a healer. We’re often told that pain fades, that wounds close, that the passing of
days brings peace. But the truth I’ve come to know is that time heals nothing, it only creates distance. It blurs, it muffles, but it does not undo.
My work reflects that some losses never fully recover, they remain within us, shaping how we move, remember, and feel. Loss is not always loud
or visible; sometimes it settles quietly inside the human body and mind. Rather than seeking resolutions or healing in a traditional sense, my
work acknowledges stability: the way absence can coexist with daily life. The textures in my artwork are scarred and weathered, layered with
marks that speak to experiences etched too deeply to vanish. Faded colors and fractured symmetry suggest a story that has been worn down,
not rewritten. The damage is not decorative, it is permanent. And yet, it is not hopeless. What time offers is not healing, but adjustment. We
learn to stand up with the weight still on our shoulders. We reshape ourselves around the ache. Pain becomes part of our architecture, invisible
to others but foundational to who we are. The Illusion of Time is a refusal to romanticize resilience. It is an acknowledgment that some things
do not get better, but we continue. We build lives around absence, speak over silence, and create beauty with broken hands. This piece lives in
that quiet defiance.”