Form as Protest against an Enduring Legacy: A Postcolonial Reading of Khalid Iqbal’s Painting

Abstract

This study investigates Khalid Iqbal's realist landscape paintings of rural Punjab and contextualize them with a comparative analysis of selected European artists, particularly Camille Pissarro, to consider forms of postcolonial resistance. Iqbal's realism in his landscapes counters modernist abstraction, revealing ecological and cultural realities and dissent against authoritarian censorship, highlighting the silenced experiences of rural Punjab. The study uses visual analysis and critical theory to interpret Iqbal's paintings as symbolic resistance sites, incorporating hybridity, subalternity, and cultural decolonization theories, and examining transhistorical cultural politics. Iqbal's realism critiques provincial decline, military authoritarianism, and cultural suppression, highlighting marginalized communities' everyday lives and psychological endurance. His work archives ecological and social memory, contrasting official histories. The study suggests re-examining Khalid Iqbal's art within global postcolonial and ecological art histories, highlighting its political significance and the potential for cultural preservation.