Riaz Ali is a Pakistani visual artist whose practice spans painting, sculpture, performance, and installation. He earned his Bachelor of Visual Arts and
Master of Art and Design from Beaconhouse National University, Lahore, where he also served as a teaching assistant. His work critically engages
with the afterlives of colonization, memory, and structures of social change, often drawing on local histories and communities. Ali has undertaken
residencies at the New Futures Arts Collaborative in Johannesburg and at Art Saraye in Lahore. He is a recipient of the AABP Practitioners Fellowship
Grant, supporting his research into contested cultural and architectural histories in Sindh. His work has been presented at leading institutions and
galleries across Pakistan, including Gallery 21 Islamabad, Numaish Gah Lahore, HAAM Gallery Lahore, O Art Space Lahore, Full Circle Gallery
Lahore, PNCA Islamabad, and VM Art Gallery Karachi, as well as in degree exhibitions at BNU. His artistic work has been exhibited globally, including
the New Futures Arts Collaborative Residency Show (Johannesburg, South Africa), South Asian Playground (Moel Gallery Dehli, India) Partition is
Imaginary (Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, USA), In recognition of his emerging practice, Ali was awarded the Young Artist Award in Lahore.
The works titled apple, banana, chair and dog are a sarcastic wink towards the notions of existence. The presence of an object signified in mere
language and lines questions its existence, whether the object that exists in the viewer’s imagination real, unreal or with respect to the work ‘surreal’.
The formal aspects of the work incorporate the ‘Hashiya’ a border commonly used in miniature painting. Another aspect borrowed from miniature
painting is the ‘Jadwal’ which is the design along the border. Lastly, there is the grid as used by billboard and cinema board painters, it is conventionally
used as a measurement form.