The Karachi Biennale opened its second iteration earlier this week. Free and open to the public over several locations, the event includes public art works by nearly one hundred artists. On Sunday plainclothes men claiming to be “officers” came to Frere Hall in central Karachi and forcibly closed one installation by the internationally celebrated artist Adeela Suleiman.
It’s titled “the Killing Fields of Karachi” and is about the extrajudicial murders alleged to have been committed by one single Karachi police officer named Rao Anwar.
Suleiman’s piece consisted of 444 stone pillars (topped with her signature metal work) arranged in a funereal order to represent the 444 people who died in altercations with Rao Anwar. He used to be the superintendent of Karachi police, ostensibly involved with cracking down on terrorists during operations in Karachi, but gained wider scrutiny last year when a human rights report come out accusing him of being involved in “192 police encounters in which 444 people were killed”.
The installation has a video element (available on Youtube) which opens with a closeup of a middle aged turbaned man sitting against the grey backdrop of a beach. Text then reveals that on the 3rd of January 2018 at 3 pm an aspiring model named Naqeebullah Mehsud was picked up along with two friends by Rao Anwar’s men from a hotel in Karachi. Rao’s sources had revealed the model had close to 9 million rupees with which he intended to buy a shop. His friends were freed on the 6th of January, but Naqeebullah was tortured during his captivity while the police demanded 20 million rupees more. By then he was in such bad shape that on the 13th of January 2018 they killed him along with three others in an orchestrated encounter, where he was shot twice in the back in an abandoned farm house in Malir.
An official arrives to stop protesters led by activist and lawyer Jibran Nasir
The video then shows aerial footage of the derelict farmhouse, the concrete rubble of the desolate place itself reminiscent of Suleiman’s stone pillars. The video states that Rao Anwar killed 444 people in similar fake encounters between 2011-2018. Not a single policeman was injured during the 745 encounters. The scene shifts to the bullet-ridden walls of a small cramped room and eventually reveals the man on the beach to be Naqeebullah’s father, who found out his son was murdered on the 17th of January when it was reported on the news.
The statistics imply a sustained and orchestrated campaign of assassinations carried out under the guise of policing. In march, Rao was indicted with 17 others on charges related to these events. Later on the 10th of July, Rao Anwar was granted bail despite the evidence against him.
The artist was there when the plainclothes men came to Frere Hall, although they didn’t speak with her directly. The men threatened the Biennale about the other art works if this one wasn’t taken down. Then they padlocked the door that led to the video. Activists including Jibran Nasir organized a press conference to draw attention to the censorship. This, too, was disrupted by officials, who took away the microphones and threatened charges because it was being held on public grounds “without permission.” Following the press conference, the men returned and destroyed the art work.
The KB organizers eventually released a statement on Facebook which attempted to distance themselves from Suleiman’s piece, saying they had reconsidered her work’s relevance to the theme of the event “Ecology and Environment”. They’ve come under some heavy and well-deserved heat for what they’ve done. The idea they didn’t know what Suleiman was going to do is clearly preposterous. Of course they did.
But the truth is they caved to the same powers that none of us stand up to. We’re angry at the organizers of the Biennale because can be. We do it because we aren’t allowed to express anger at those actually responsible for this. Had the Biennale insisted on keeping the installation, they risked very real retribution. That most of liberal civil society is frothing for the organizers themselves to lead a charge into a battle none of us are truly willing to fight is what makes this outrage fairly hypocritical.
Don’t be angry at the people who had the guts to put up such a thoughtful piece in such a public place. Be angry at the unaccountable authorities invested in shutting them down.
As always happens when truth or art has to engage with state machinery in our repressive, near-totalitarian state, public art in Pakistan is on dangerous ground. Its the one time the art world (usually produced and consumed privately and seen by a overwhelmingly privileged class) has to negotiate with the state who has no interest in art other than horrifying airport murals, statues of eunuch equines or fighter jets. This heavy-handed attack on an art piece about publicly available information did manage to eradicate the work, but it failed at silencing it. Now every art magazine from Karachi to the L.A knows about Rao Anwar and his 444 victims. And so while I hope that everyone involved remains safe from danger, I think “boycotting the Biennale” is self defeatist. They’ve done a spectacular thing, but to expect them to fight “for us” is untenable.
You’re only angry at them because you’re too afraid of the people actually responsible. To be honest, we all are. You know who you ought to boycott. We all do. The only question is how many people truly can stand up to a repressive state?
