In 1974, Maoist trade union leader Abdur Rehman was assassinated at the behest of the owner of the factories in which he organized. He soon earned the honorific, shaheed (martyr) by two competing Maoist groups in Lahore, the Professors’ Group and the Mazdoor Kisan Party, and local artists created work commemorating Abdur Rehman. Through these images, in addition to archival, oral history, and collections research in 13 archives plus private papers and 5 museum collections on 3 continents in 6 countries, I narrate a little-known chapter in Pakistan’s labor history. These innovations included organizing around neighborhood in addition to workplace which involved the creation of organizations of neighborhood women to support male factory workers while also addressing issues of reproductive labor. Yet after his murder, the Professors’ Group in particular, failed to meet the moment leading to disaffection among rank and file. I compare the artwork made about Abdur Rehman’s martyrdom to artwork made by other Maoist groups in Paris to commemorate assassinated labor leader Pierre Overney, focusing on works made by Chris Marker, Merri Jolivet, Gérard Fromanger and others after the assassination of the Gauche Prolétarienne labor leader in 1972, along with the Black Panther Party’s posters commemorating the assassination of Fred Hampton and OSPAAAL posters commemorating martyrs across the Global South. The result of this comparison is firstly, an analysis of the aesthetic strategies Maoist artists used during this conjuncture to depict martyred leaders, and secondly, an assessment of role visual art played in how Maoists responded to the murders of some of the most innovative and courageous organizers of the 1970s.

Bio: Kristin Plys is Associate Professor of sociology and history at the University of Toronto. From 2023-24 she was the J. Clawson Mills Scholar in the Director’s Office at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and is the author of two award winning books. Funded by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, she is currently writing a book on the intersection of politics and visual art in Lahore, Pakistan from 1971 to 1988.

Sponsored by the Department of Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages, with funding from the Joshi Family Fund.