Image: Asian Art Museum of San Francisco
The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco is presenting ‘Subh-e-Umeed,’ a sound installation by Pakistani artist and activist Lala Rukh, in Samsung Hall through September 7. Running from February 13, 2026, the presentation marks the first West Coast exhibition of Rukh’s work and is included with general admission.
The installation reconstructs a morning in Lahore, Rukh’s birthplace, during Pakistan’s politically fraught Lawyer Movement. It begins with birdsong at daybreak before moving into the sounds of a crowd gathering outside the city’s High Court. Marching, shouted slogans and the atmosphere of a public demonstration gradually build through the work, which concludes with strands of Hindustani classical music and vocals by Sarah Zaman.
‘Subh-e-Umeed,’ whose title refers to the hope associated with daybreak, combines documentary sound with musical and vocal elements. The museum describes it as a sonic archive of a specific moment of protest, while the presentation frames the work as an exploration of awakening and possibility. The sound composition brings together recordings of historic demonstrations with Rukh’s sustained engagement with music and methods of recording change over time.
“Lala Rukh’s practice regularly engaged with music and recordings,” said exhibition curator Padma Dorje Maitland, the Malavalli Family Foundation Associate Curator of the Art of the Indian Subcontinent at the Asian Art Museum. Maitland said the work’s use of sound is connected to Rukh’s “rigorous exploration of inventive, delicate forms of notation to record changes over time.” Although distinctive within Rukh’s practice as a sound work, Maitland described it as an introduction to an artist whose work and activism were closely linked, inviting audiences into “the feeling of hope on the cusp of change.”
Rukh (1948–2017) studied art at Punjab University in Lahore and earned a second MFA from the University of Chicago. She taught for 30 years at Punjab University’s Department of Fine Art and at the National College of Arts, where she established the MA(Hons) Visual Art Program in 2000. The museum identifies her as one of South Asia’s foremost feminist activist artists. After retiring from teaching, she devoted her time to her Lahore studio and to activism, and her work was exhibited in solo and group presentations internationally.
The Asian Art Museum, formally the Chong-Moon Lee Center for Asian Art and Culture, is located at 200 Larkin Street in San Francisco. ‘Subh-e-Umeed’ remains on view in Samsung Hall until September 7, 2026.
