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The elusive history and politics of Pakistan’s truck art
NADEEM F. PARACHA — UPDATED ABOUT 3 HOURS AGO
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Pakistan’s ‘truck art’ is now quite a well-known ‘genre’ around the world. For long, it has been an homegrown art-form in South Asia, especially in Pakistan, where the whole idea of decorating trucks (also, lorries and even rickshaws) with complex floral patterns and poetic calligraphy, has evolved in the most radiant and innovative manner.
This indigenous art-form became known to the developed world from the 1970s onwards when European and American tourists took back the photographs they had taken of heavily painted and decorated trucks and buses on the roads and streets of Pakistan.
From the late 1980s, the government of Pakistan and enterprising individuals began to organise truck art exhibitions abroad and by the early 2000s, the genre had established itself as an exciting and vibrant ‘folk art-form’ from Pakistan.
A tram in Australia with designs and decoration inspired by Pakistan’s truck art.
A Pakistani truck at a truck art exhibition in the UK.
A scooter in Paris.
So much has already been written and said about truck art. Yet, very little is ever said about its history.
Though experts around the world have spent a lot of effort in trying to dissect the aesthetical dynamics of this art-form; and on how these dynamics are a reflection of a process which sees Pakistan’s traditional folk imageries become fused with those of modernity, which the drivers come across on the roads, very few have attempted to trace the history of this forthright, yet enigmatic, art-form.
A much restrained version of this art-form was present in the subcontinent in the 1940s.
It first appeared on trucks and lorries driven by Sikh transporters who would paint a portrait of their spiritual Gurus, or those who helped form the Sikh religion.
The portraits were painted with the loudest of colours. Simultaneously, Muslim transporters and drivers began to paint portraits of famous Sufi saints on their trucks and lorries.
By 1947 — the year Pakistan emerged as an independent country — truckers began to add more elements around the portraits of the Sufis, such as whole landscapes, flying horses, peacocks, etc.
Art on a present-day truck harking back to the decades-old practice of painting portraits of Sufi saints and spiritual vagabonds (fakirs) on lorries.
In the 1960s, a strand of truck art in Pakistan began to incorporate politics.
Heavily painted portraits of Pakistan’s first military dictator, Ayub Khan, began to emerge on trucks which were mostly owned by transporters from Khan’s home province, the NWFP (present-day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa).
Ayub’s regime was largely secular-nationalist in disposition and his state-backed capitalist policies had triggered rapid industrialisation in the major cities of Pakistan.
Though the transporters too, had benefitted from these policies, their homage to him (on their trucks), had more to do with the fact that he belonged to their province and had encouraged the migration of labour from NWFP to the booming metropolis, Karachi.
A driver wipes off dust from the portrait of Ayub Khan which was originally painted on this truck in 1966.
In the early 1970s a most interesting phenomenon galvanised the genre of truck art.
Till the late 1960s, trucks were mostly being painted with spiritual and exotic images on the rear of the vehicles.
From the early 1970s, images and calligraphy began to completely engulf the whole body of the vehicle.
This was prompted by the manner in which billboards and hoardings of Pakistani films became louder and more kaleidoscopic in appearance.
In turn, those painting such billboards were inspired by the ‘psychedelic art’ and Pop Art which had begun to mushroom in the west from the late 1960s onward.
So the painters of truck art, mostly stationed in workshops and cheap roadside eateries along Pakistan’s highways, began to incorporate the complex and loud wall-to-wall style adopted by the billboard painters and fused it with the already established flair of the truck art genre.
The first to get painted in this manner were the ‘mini-buses’ of Karachi. A 1975 feature (in the now defunct Urdu newspaper, Aman), quotes a mini-bus driver describing his heavily decorated and painted vehicle as a dhulan(bride). The style was soon adapted on trucks.
In Paradise — a book about the famous but now defunct ‘hippie trail’ which ran from Turkey to Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and all the way to India and Nepal — mentions how a group of European hippies (in 1974) would take LSD and then go bus and truck spotting on the roads of Pakistan! To them it was ‘psychedelic heaven.’
The sudden burst of ceaseless colour and imagery on trucks and buses in the 1970s also had to do with the extroverted nature of the Pakistani society during the populist ZA Bhutto regime (1971-77).
What’s more, Bhutto became the second political figure to begin appearing on trucks — mostly on lorries owned by transporters from the Punjab and interior of the Sindh province.
By the 1970s, non-Pakistani figures also began to appear in truck art. For example, martial arts expert and film star, Bruce Lee, became hugely popular in Pakistan.
He became the first non-Pakistani celebrity to appear on trucks, surrounded by the traditional imagery of truck art, thus creating a most surreal effect.
A present-day ‘mini-bus’ in Karachi. They were the first to go completely ‘psychedelic’ in the 1970s.
A mural inspired by Bhutto's portrait which first appeared on trucks.
Bruce Lee in truck art heaven.
NADEEM F. PARACHA — UPDATED ABOUT 3 HOURS AGO
7 COMMENTS
Pakistan’s ‘truck art’ is now quite a well-known ‘genre’ around the world. For long, it has been an homegrown art-form in South Asia, especially in Pakistan, where the whole idea of decorating trucks (also, lorries and even rickshaws) with complex floral patterns and poetic calligraphy, has evolved in the most radiant and innovative manner.
This indigenous art-form became known to the developed world from the 1970s onwards when European and American tourists took back the photographs they had taken of heavily painted and decorated trucks and buses on the roads and streets of Pakistan.
From the late 1980s, the government of Pakistan and enterprising individuals began to organise truck art exhibitions abroad and by the early 2000s, the genre had established itself as an exciting and vibrant ‘folk art-form’ from Pakistan.
A tram in Australia with designs and decoration inspired by Pakistan’s truck art.
A Pakistani truck at a truck art exhibition in the UK.
A scooter in Paris.
So much has already been written and said about truck art. Yet, very little is ever said about its history.
Though experts around the world have spent a lot of effort in trying to dissect the aesthetical dynamics of this art-form; and on how these dynamics are a reflection of a process which sees Pakistan’s traditional folk imageries become fused with those of modernity, which the drivers come across on the roads, very few have attempted to trace the history of this forthright, yet enigmatic, art-form.
A much restrained version of this art-form was present in the subcontinent in the 1940s.
It first appeared on trucks and lorries driven by Sikh transporters who would paint a portrait of their spiritual Gurus, or those who helped form the Sikh religion.
The portraits were painted with the loudest of colours. Simultaneously, Muslim transporters and drivers began to paint portraits of famous Sufi saints on their trucks and lorries.
By 1947 — the year Pakistan emerged as an independent country — truckers began to add more elements around the portraits of the Sufis, such as whole landscapes, flying horses, peacocks, etc.
Art on a present-day truck harking back to the decades-old practice of painting portraits of Sufi saints and spiritual vagabonds (fakirs) on lorries.
In the 1960s, a strand of truck art in Pakistan began to incorporate politics.
Heavily painted portraits of Pakistan’s first military dictator, Ayub Khan, began to emerge on trucks which were mostly owned by transporters from Khan’s home province, the NWFP (present-day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa).
Ayub’s regime was largely secular-nationalist in disposition and his state-backed capitalist policies had triggered rapid industrialisation in the major cities of Pakistan.
Though the transporters too, had benefitted from these policies, their homage to him (on their trucks), had more to do with the fact that he belonged to their province and had encouraged the migration of labour from NWFP to the booming metropolis, Karachi.
A driver wipes off dust from the portrait of Ayub Khan which was originally painted on this truck in 1966.
In the early 1970s a most interesting phenomenon galvanised the genre of truck art.
Till the late 1960s, trucks were mostly being painted with spiritual and exotic images on the rear of the vehicles.
From the early 1970s, images and calligraphy began to completely engulf the whole body of the vehicle.
This was prompted by the manner in which billboards and hoardings of Pakistani films became louder and more kaleidoscopic in appearance.
In turn, those painting such billboards were inspired by the ‘psychedelic art’ and Pop Art which had begun to mushroom in the west from the late 1960s onward.
So the painters of truck art, mostly stationed in workshops and cheap roadside eateries along Pakistan’s highways, began to incorporate the complex and loud wall-to-wall style adopted by the billboard painters and fused it with the already established flair of the truck art genre.
The first to get painted in this manner were the ‘mini-buses’ of Karachi. A 1975 feature (in the now defunct Urdu newspaper, Aman), quotes a mini-bus driver describing his heavily decorated and painted vehicle as a dhulan(bride). The style was soon adapted on trucks.
In Paradise — a book about the famous but now defunct ‘hippie trail’ which ran from Turkey to Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and all the way to India and Nepal — mentions how a group of European hippies (in 1974) would take LSD and then go bus and truck spotting on the roads of Pakistan! To them it was ‘psychedelic heaven.’
The sudden burst of ceaseless colour and imagery on trucks and buses in the 1970s also had to do with the extroverted nature of the Pakistani society during the populist ZA Bhutto regime (1971-77).
What’s more, Bhutto became the second political figure to begin appearing on trucks — mostly on lorries owned by transporters from the Punjab and interior of the Sindh province.
By the 1970s, non-Pakistani figures also began to appear in truck art. For example, martial arts expert and film star, Bruce Lee, became hugely popular in Pakistan.
He became the first non-Pakistani celebrity to appear on trucks, surrounded by the traditional imagery of truck art, thus creating a most surreal effect.
A present-day ‘mini-bus’ in Karachi. They were the first to go completely ‘psychedelic’ in the 1970s.
A mural inspired by Bhutto's portrait which first appeared on trucks.
Bruce Lee in truck art heaven.