Ehsan Ul Haq
Born 1983, Lahore, Pakistan.
Lives and works in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
The human has always seen him-/herself as the center of existence and all other creatures are meant to serve his purposes. This is seen in the way we conceive our religions and societies and put all other beings at our services. Ehsan Ul Haq’s work is about the human being’s existence in the world in relation to its kind and to other living and non-living beings. Ul Haq studies how the human need to construct the other, model it in a way that enables humanity to then frame itself and survive, leads to exercises of existential, economic, political and social powers.
Ehsan Ul Haq’s work is a meticulous observation and vivid narration or attempt at depicting humanity’s basic characteristics of survival, i.e. the ability to observe, identify, recognize and comprehend. By putting a spotlight not only at the relations between for example the human and animals or human and other humans, but also on the power gradients that make up these relations, Ul Haq reveals the manipulative nature of the human being, embedded in his wish to classify, name, control, and subordinate.