Abdul Rehman Chaudhry

Lives and works in Lahore, Pakistan

Artist statement

My practice begins with relationships: between people and materials, bodies and landscapes, inherited knowledge and contemporary life. Working across installation, textiles, moving image, photography and participatory practice, I am interested in what happens when an artwork is understood not as an autonomous object, but as something formed through relationships with makers, communities, places, stories and other forms of life. Much of my work grows from long-term field research across Punjab and Sindh. These encounters have changed how I understand knowledge itself. I am interested in forms of knowing that do not easily separate textile from agriculture, clothing from climate, craft from everyday life, or material from the social relationships through which it is made. Folk literature, oral traditions, communal making and inherited material practices enter my work not as remnants of a disappearing past, but as living forms of knowledge through which the present can be questioned. This relational understanding also comes directly from your field research, where material, climate, architecture, food, craft and social life continually act upon one another rather than existing as discrete categories. I am interested in making work that can be encountered physically and socially rather than only observed at a distance. I often work with materials whose textures, weight, movement and processes of making can be felt, handled or experienced, allowing viewers to form their own...

Artwork