Pakistan’s famous truck art is to move from its highways to the skies, as a flying academy is painting a two-seater Cessna aircraft with the colorful technique.
With elaborate and flamboyant motifs, Pakistani truck art has inspired gallery exhibitions abroad and prompted stores in Western cities to sell miniatures.
PROMOTING PAKISTAN
Photo: Reuters
“We want to show the world that Pakistan is not all about Financial Action Task Force and terrorism issues; it a very diverse country and a land of opportunities,” said Imran Aslam Khan, chief operating officer of Sky Wings, a flight training organization.
He also plans to paint other aircraft, with the aim of promoting tourism in Pakistan.
‘COLORS WILL FLY’
Such art has become one of Pakistan’s best-known cultural exports.
UNESCO has been using truck art, blended with indigenous themes, to promote girls’ education in a northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province.
“The world is familiar with our truck art representation; now, with this aircraft, our colors will fly in the air. We are really excited,” Haider Ali, the artist painting the aircraft, said at the academy’s hangar.
Trained by his father, Ali, 40, has been decorating trucks since his childhood and is now one of the most prominent such painters in Pakistan.
Ali hopes to paint an Airbus or Boeing plane, saying an opportunity to work on such gargantuan planes would truly be a learning experience.
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