Lujane Pagganwala, (Pakistani, b.1997), is a multidisciplinary artist with a profound affinity towards towers, structures, ladders and the like. She investigates the phenomenology of space, as an idea and as a physical entity. Pagganwala’s practice explores abstract existences on multiple spatial-temporal planes at once, and our omnipresent transience across them. Taking inspiration from childhood spaces as well as urban topographies, she creates hybrid realities that are playful, complex and confrontational. The interactive nature of her practice layers these experiences into an ever-lasting loop of curiosities and becoming. A co-existence of amalgamated energies in flux - a Flash Space, as she refers to them.
Pagganwala received an MA in Contemporary Art Practice from Royal College of Art, London, and continues to work mainly between the UK and Pakistan. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally across major institutions like Tate Modern, The Bombfactory, Khoj Studios, Canvas Gallery, and many more. Pagganwala witnesses her practice morph and mutate whilst moving between different geographical states.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My practice is an investigation on the phenomenology of space,; specifically intangible spaces. The ultimate aim is to demonstrate three levels of space within the work: physical, experienced and imagined. The work explores the human experience of existing (physically and abstractly) through these multiple spatial-temporal planes all at once, our constant oscillation through them, and the profound impact they cause. How might I elucidate the study of Entanglement within (and in relation to) the discourse of the Self?
Language has not yet coined a term to explain such phenomena. These are spaces in pursuit. Existences on ‘exilic grounds’ as Heidegger explains3. In my body of work, I refer to these as ‘Flash Spaces’.
The complex nature of these concepts sway me to regress back to childhood, to revisit the most innocent form of spaces/structures/towers known to us. The spaces I create are invariably also inspired by my city’s (Karachi) architecture. Belonging to a coastal city, its crude and spontaneous architectural language resonates through my structures. In an increasingly post-structural world, my spaces act as a hybrid between urban and childhood topographies. Drawing a parallel between the intangible and the tangible, wherein one space decodes the other.
One to two
& two in all
Two save one
Is one after all
The work is an exploration of concepts such as Liminality, Hauntology4, Entanglement5, and (Non)structuralism6 amongst many more. I create immersive and confrontational experiences for the audience, thereby making each body of work performative.
It is a mobile practice, forever in transience, and forever curious.
Spatial consciousness gives way to an undulating parachronism
And we are left
As is the uncracking paint
On walls built for surrender
The voyeurism plagued by the curtain.
1 Liu Shengli, ‘Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Space, Preliminary Reflection on an Archaeology of Primordial Spatiality’ in, The 3rd BESETO Conference of Philosophy, Session Vol. 5, p. 138, (2009), pp. 131-1382 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Orion, 1964) pp 82-98
3 Alejandro A.Vallega, Heidegger and the Issue of Space: Thinking on Exilic Grounds (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008)
4 Mark Fisher, ‘What Is Hauntology?’, Film Quarterly, 66.1 (2012), pp. 16–24, doi:10.1525/fq.2012.66.1.16 5 What Is Entanglement and Why Is It Important? (n.d.). Caltech Science Exchange.
https://scienceexchange.caltech.edu/topics/quantum-science-explained/entanglement?ref=refind 6 Marc AugeĢ, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (Verso, 1995)
Written by Lujane Pagganwala