What Comes to My Lips is the first monograph on the artist Ambreen Butt. Trained in the thousand-year tradition of Indo-Persian miniature painting and contemporary Western art and theory, Butt's studio practice circumvents history, tradition and contemporaneity, creating a multifaceted project that explores civil liberties and rights, mutual responsibilities and complex geopolitical forces.Illuminated with images of the artist's paintings, collaged works on paper and large-scale installations from the past three decades, this in-depth book features essays by curator/writer Sara Raza and artist/critic Quddus Mirza. Raza examines Butt's practice through the thematic lens of the sciences of Islam's Golden Age (7th-14th century), proposing a bridge that connects art, history and cosmology. In his essay, Mirza places the conventions of the artist's work in relation to longer historical narratives and traditional gendered roles across the spectrums of time and locality.An intimate archive of Butt's technically rich, aesthetically delightful work, What Comes to My Lips invites the reader to enter the symbolic landscape of Butt's oeuvre and discover the hidden, unseen and unrecorded aspects that shimmer beneath the surface of even the most fraught realities.

Accompanying the first U.S. museum exhibition devoted to contemporary art from Pakistan, this dynamic catalogue provides a groundbreaking look at recent and current trends in Pakistani art. Hanging Fire covers a fascinating range of subjects and media, from installation and video art to sculpture, drawing, and paintings in the "contemporary miniature" tradition. Essays by distinguished contributors from a variety of fields, including Salima Hashmi, Pakistani-American sociologist and historian Ayesha Jalal, and the celebrated novelist Mohsin Hamid, place contemporary Pakistani art in a cultural, historical, and artistic perspective. The book's title, Hanging Fire, alludes to the contemporary economic, political, and social tensions--both local and global--from which these artists find their creative inspiration. It may also suggest to the viewer to delay judgment, particularly based on assumptions or preconceived notions about contemporary society and artistic expression in Pakistan today. Distributed for the Asia Society Museum Exhibition Schedule: Asia Society and Museum (9/10/09 - 1/3/10)