Artist Rashid Rana has been appointed director of the inaugural edition of the Lahore Biennale in Pakistan. Scheduled for November 2017, the biennale will be free to attend and aim to ‘engage directly with the city, expanding the production and presentation of art beyond the traditional gallery context’.
Rana trained as a painter at the NCA in Lahore and at the Massachusetts College of Fine Arts in Boston. He is the founding faculty member and head of the Fine Art department at Beaconhouse National University in Lahore. Recent solo exhibitions include a major mid-career retrospective, entitled Labyrinth of Reflections at Mohatta Palace Museum, Karachi (2013), as well as solo surveys at Cornerhouse, Manchester (2011) and Musée Guimet, Paris (2010). He participated in My East is Your West, a joint pavilion for Pakistan and India (read our interview here) at the 2015 Venice Biennale; Kiev Biennial (2012); the fifth Asia Pacific Triennale, Queensland Gallery of Art, Brisbane (2006) and the Singapore Biennial (2006). Rana also has an upcoming survey show at Kiran Nadar Museum New Delhi.
