Truck Art of Pakistan

Indigenous Truck Art

The under-appreciated, indigenous Pakistani tradition of truck painting has an extraordinary history, starting in the days of the Raj. As early as the 1920′s, competing transportation companies would hire craftsmen to adorn their buses in the hopes that these moving canvases would attract more passengers. The technique worked so well that pretty soon you couldn’t purchase a ticket without seeing dozens of beautifully painted trucks waiting to take you to your destination. While the art doesn’t serve the same purpose anymore, it is still as prevalent as ever and has become more intricate and developed a deeper cultural significance over time.

Even though truck art isn’t unique to Pakistan anymore, nowhere else in the world is the practice so pervasive. In a country where the per capita income is barely north of $2,000, it is surprising to see fleet owners (the trucks aren’t owner-operated) spend $3,000-$5,000 per truck for structural modifications that convert these gas-guzzling, smoke-spewing, road-dominating monstrosities into beautiful moving canvases covered in poetry, folk tales, and religious, sentimental and emotional worldviews of the individuals employed in the truck industry making it one of the biggest forms of representational art in the country.