Bringing Pakistani truck art to the US

A Pakistan-origin professor has modified an American truck into a Pakistani truck and plans to take it around the country to showcase the South Asian truck art culture in the US.
The vehicle is covered with a collage of floral patterns and pictures of Pakistani leaders, poets and activists like Malala Yousafzai, the recent Nobel Peace Prize winner.
"Growing up, I saw truck art whenever I visited Pakistan. The truck grew out of another project I was working on about loss of cultural monuments to diaspora," said Osman Khan, assistant professor at University of Michigan's School of Art and Design.

The back of Khan's truck is ornately decorated with buraq, a creature with wings which according to legend traveled with the prophets to heaven.
The front of the truck will soon be decorated with calligraphy, ornamental shapes and patterns in shiny metallic and colored foil, Khan said.
Truck art is found in regions across South America and South Asia, but few are as elaborate as the moving canvasses that rumble down the roads of Pakistan, hauling bags of sugar, lumber and other cargo, the University said in a statement.

By making this Pakistani truck in the US, Khan is critiquing and celebrating the Pakistani truck art culture, it said.

Instead of traditional painting on the truck, he used painted vinyl strips. He wants to introduce the tradition in the US and hopes that using vinyl strips, much like stickers, will provide a viable method to showcase this tradition in cities across the country, it added.
Khan said he decided not to import a Pakistani truck like the Smithsonian did for an exhibition a few years ago because he wants it to be replicated and used in the US. "It would be great to see another decorated truck on the road," he said.
Khan wants to make a decorated truck part of the visual landscape as it crisscrosses through all the states.

Last year, Khan traveled to more than 18 states as he took the vehicle to Los Angeles for his exhibition, "All the Rage".
"This is another way to celebrate art from Pakistan that I didn't see growing up in the US," said Khan, adding that highly decorated trucks in Pakistan are part advertising, part good luck talisman and part self-expression as each region has developed specialized decorations.
The truck is part of his new work called "The Road to Hybridabad" (a pun on the name of Pakistani city Hyderabad).
Khan calls it aesthetic provocation to address Western cultural and visual control in the global landscape. He is challenging it one truck at a time.

Khan and his truck will also take part in an exhibition in Windsor, Ontario, on "Border Cultures" in January 2015.