Dean Mariam Dawood School of Visual Arts and Design, Mr. Rashid Rana has been chosen as the Artistic Director of the first ever Biennale in Pakistan, the Lahore Biennale. Scheduled for November 2017, Lahore Biennale is being presented by the Lahore Biennale Foundation (LBF).

In a press conference held at Lahore Press Club on March 14, 2016, Rashid Rana along with LBF Chairman Osman Khalid Waheed, and Co-Founder & Executive Director Qudsia Rahim, announced that the Lahore Biennale will be held every two years. It will be the largest and the most ambitious public art undertaking in the history of the country. Well-known Art historian and academic Iftikhar Dadi and Devi Art Foundation Principal and art patron Lekha Poddar were also present on the occasion.

Being an artist of international repute, Rashid Rana will create a vision and narrative for the Lahore Biennale. He elaborated, "The objective is to produce something that has local and global relevance. The Biennale will be for people; projects will be located in the city, which will become part of the city in a much more meaningful way than just calling them public art. It aspires to be a biennale without walls, in every sense of the word."

In 2015, Rashid Rana brought the first large-scale public project of its kind in Pakistan, ‘My East is Your West,’ in collaboration with LBF and Gujral Foundation. Now in his new role as the Artistic Director of the Lahore Biennale, he is aiming to initiate a conversation between Pakistan and the rest of the world through art.

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