burst in Shortly after the opening of the mysterious security forces and an Installation by the artist Adeela Suleman destroyed, a major work of the second Karachi art Biennale. With 444 concrete, the Pakistani in the court of Karachis Frere Hall, the historic town hall, the British had steles, of the 444 victims of reminds of the the “illegal killings” of a notorious police officer from the city to the victim.
The action is unleashed in the social media, a storm of indignation. Human rights activists showed solidarity with Suleman in a die-in in front of the Frere Hall. A courageous Protest, and fear of new violence, with this explosive mixture, the art Biennale, which now goes to the end of the fight, in your second year.
in Order not to jeopardize your young-in-law, Niilofur Farrukh, the Doyenne of Pakistani art criticism and the founder of the Biennale, initially to the Assault. A Statement of the Biennale, accused the artist to politicize the Show, their work was “not compatible with the Ethos” of the Biennale. A Statement from the curator Muhammad Zeeshan calmed the situation.
was The hasenfüssige Tactics like a shadow over the biennial, which started as a project of self-encouragement.
It can be highly dangerous in Pakistan for the art of freedom, as is the case of Sabeen Mahmud has shown. The liberal social activist, who had founded Karachis Art Space and Intellectual club “The Second Floor-T2F”, had been murdered in the spring of 2015, as they wanted to make on the fate of “disappeared people” attention, which were presumed to have been by the apparatus of the state was kidnapped.
And yet: The hasenfüssige Tactics was then hanging like a bad shadow over the Rest of the Biennale, a project by the effort of civil society self-encouragement, which started out promising. And led as one of the few organizations of this kind in the world almost exclusively by women. But it is easy to forget that the country is already in 1949, the “All women’s League” was established; that, in 1983, sixteen artists proclaimed from Lahore the “Women Artists ‘Manifesto” – also, the current Biennale Director Farrukh belonged to the “Women against Rape”.
“women like Niilofur were an example for us. I grew up under the dictator Zia ul-Haq, we were much frightened,” says a Generation younger video artist Atteqa Malik. Now it is your comrade-in-arms at the Biennale.
Atlas of biodiversity
Beyond the political tensions was the second edition of the Show quite well. It abounds currently in the art world of exhibitions on the Anthropocene, Ecology, sustainability. In contrast to the recent Istanbul Biennale, where Nicolas Bourriaud lost in speculation about the post-human, the Karachi Biennale, with its focus on the destruction of the environment and climate change, but pleasing concrete.
you could See in the small gallery, Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, a characteristic, over a hundred-year-old brick building. In your “Mangrove Project” had installed five Pakistani artists are seedlings and seeds of native mangrove species, which are threatened by environmental changes, in glass blocks, a kind of Atlas of biodiversity. Gently abstracted about Sadia Salim, the grove, by plating it with porcelain.
in Contrast, staged Rashid Rana is a poetic metaphor: In his Video “Beauty Lies”, the Pakistani artist, following the example of Caspar David Friedrich’s “Wanderer above the sea of fog” with the back to the viewer unmoved on a mountain of garbage.
lost garden
One of the venues of the Biennale, the Ibn-Qasim Park, a huge green area, which is degenerated in the last few years. The retired science Manager Almas Bana, the only man in the biennial guide, remember, to have already played as a child: “For us, it was like a lost garden.” Now, he is happy to give the place with the Karachi Biennale, again, relevance.
The lost Paradise has brought back the Look of the city though. But a marble sculpture by the artist Hamra Abbas. In the four pages of your massive stone block that you inserted in marquetry of fruit trees, the call to be an Islamic Tradition for this place of longing. It remains to be seen how long this job remains there.
information about the Biennale can be found here.
Created: 11.11.2019, 11:48 PM
