Faiza Butt was one of the artists who were properly launched into the Western art stratosphere with this exhibition in New York. She is now represented by art galleries Rossi and Rossi and Grosvenor Gallery in London. Butt will, however, have no truck with my coinage "Young Pakistani Artist", a term she not only derides but chides me for using. Yet it is convenient shorthand, one she resorts to herself, unknowingly, during our conversation. She would much rather I call her an artist from Pakistan. She reasons that being called a Pakistani artist limits the purview of artists from the region. During our somewhat unorthodox interview in London, perhaps the most cosmopolitan city in the world, she often reiterates that her concerns transcend national boundaries. "It is very important to me that what I make should have universality and no matter where you display it, people should be able to relate to it and read it. It shouldn't be framed culturally as Pakistani or Indian art."
The 'Sensation' moment for Pakistani art may have passed with 'Hanging Fire' at the Asia Society in New York in 2009 where, to neologise, YPAs (Young Pakistani Artists) had the opportunity to display their version of the errant, eye-catching tactics the YBAs (Young British Artists) so effectively tried in the 1990s: Rashid Rana's Persian carpet, which on closer inspection transforms into thousands of miniscule images of slaughter in abattoirs; Huma Mulji's taxidermic cows dangling from pylons or fluted, ionic columns; Imran Qureshi's seemingly harmless but subliminally threatening bearded men; Anwar Saeed's stylised homoerotic images of men in langots; and Arif Mahmood's consternation-filling, gun-toting urchin on a Karachi beach – but, seven years on, its progenitors continue to be in fine fettle.