The work of Imram Mir (1950-2014) presents a unique opportunity to discuss the limits of the modernist artistic and modern architectural project, which remains perplexingly central to the Brazilian experience. The trajectory that the Pakistani artist followed in the formal and discursive investigation of modernism, abstraction, and minimalism in New York, Toronto, and especially in Karachi allows us to understand an artistic practice that is not captured by the Western genealogy of art.

Mir’s entire artistic production developed as a continuous poetic research entitled Papers on Modern Art (1976-2014). Each of the twelve series created by the artist is numbered and consists of a determined set of works, whether paintings, sculptures, or installations. Over four decades, Mir dedicated himself to an in-depth and joyful experimentation around abstract language through geometric forms. The very idea embedded in the project’s format corresponds to a sense of unfolding over time, a process to materialize into something new.

In Ninth Paper on Modern Art (1997), for example, we gain insight into the many studies by the artist with spheres, orbits, pyramids, and other forms he employed in his works. In Twelfth Paper on Modern Art (2014), the last series he completed, we encounter the largest sculptural pieces. The scale of his art redefines geometric forms in new kinetic discoveries, often involving elements that repeat in a series, such as metal spheres in space or a large fiberglass globe. The papers are not final versions, as one element leads to the next visual reflection of his abstract imagination.

Curator Amal Alhaag pointed out how “Imran Mir engaged with Western artists while deliberately, or not, attempting to expand the shutters of modernism and abstraction. The provocation lies, perhaps, in how one can deconstruct and liberate artistic concepts from the oppressive grip of the West and its canonical approach to art and world-making.”¹ In our case, then, it lies in how the large, colorful designs of Mir’s pieces can rub against Niemeyer’s white Pavilion, relating submerged colonial historical contexts, where “color is the master of the ceremony in which the lines form a chorus.”²