Farrah Mahmood Rana - Pride of Performance
Farrah is a graduate of the National College of Arts (NCA) Lahore and specializes in Asian Miniature painting, specifically in the style of Mughal miniatures of the Subcontinent. She received her degree of Masters in Art Education from the Beacon House National University (BNU, Lahore) in 2016.
She has delivered many lectures and conducted workshops at several prestigious colleges, universities, and arts institutions at the national and international level, i.e., the U.K., U.S.A., Austria, France, and China, on a variety of subjects related to visual art. Currently, Farrah is continuing her art practice from her studio and conducting workshops on traditional miniature painting at her studio in Tumair, Islamabad. Her work deals with a range of socio-political issues. In most of her work, attention is drawn to the abuse of power in all its senses, which is the root cause of a corrupt and unjust system, distressing our personal judgment of human values. The emphasis of her work is on peace and humanity. Her works connect her interests with contemporary experimentation by combining them with traditional miniature painting. She is Associate Professor at the Department of Art and Design, COMSATS University (CUI), Islamabad Campus. At CUI, Farrah also established the COMSATS Art Gallery (CAG) in 2011. The gallery has a great standing in the art circle and institutes. She has curated many exhibitions at CAG and has thus promoted many local, national, and international artists, designers and architects. For the curatorial projects, she received an award from the Honorable President of Pakistan, Mamnoon Hussain (Late) in 2018.
Besides Five solo shows (National and International), Farrah has participated in more than 160 national and international group exhibitions, including those held in the U.S.A., Canada, U.K., Austria, France, Hong Kong, China, Baku (Azerbaijan), Tehran, Jeddah, India, Bangladesh, U.A.E., Bahrain, and Greece.
Farrah Mahmood Rana has recently received the prestigious President’s Award for Pride of Performance on 23rd March 2024. She received the Excellence Award from Beaconhouse National (BNU) in December 2023. She received the Charles Wallace Visiting Fellowship Award (UK) for excellence in the field of traditional miniature art and has conducted several workshops for art professionals and students in UK. The Art House in Wakefield (U.K.) awarded her the Artist in Residence in 2009. She was also awarded residency by the Austrian Federal Chancellery in 2006. She was nominated for the Sovereign Art Competition in 2015. In 2016, she was awarded the Gold Medal by Markaz Group International Magazine (MGM). The magazine selected 100 women in Pakistan who have made a change through their work and awarded them the “Best Women Role Model Award 2016.”
Farrah is one of the winners of “Imagining Our Future Together,” organized by the World Bank. Her work has been included in the World Bank Permanent Collection at the Headquarters in Washington, D.C. In addition, her work is also included in the permanent collections of such prestigious places and galleries as the National Art Gallery, the Parliament House of Pakistan, the
Ministry of Science and Technology in Islamabad, the Austrian Embassy, the Secretary Charles Wallace Trust, the Embassy of the People Republic of China, and the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan.
She was awarded residency project at CAMAC France with the collaboration of the French Embassy in Islamabad. Farrah was invited by the Chinese Ambassador to be a part of the “Elite Delegates of Pakistan for China “in 2016. She was awarded by CUI for the management training at Bedfordshire University (U.K) in July 2017. In December 2018, she received the 2nd Women Role Model Award by KZee Arts. She was awarded the Peace Friendship Award by the PEACE Garden Museum in Beijing, China, in October 2017. In October 2019, she was awarded by the International Research Center for Islamic Culture and Art (IRCICA), Istanbul, for the First Baku International Art and Crafts Festival. Farrah has curated enormous projects for artists, designers and architects, one of them was “My Traditions verses Your Modernity,” for the Islamabad Art Festival (IAF-19) at CAG. In a short period, she has made commendable progress in her field of visual arts and academia and earned national and international reputation.