There’s something that pulls you like ribbons through Frere Hall’s mammoth body at the launch of the first Karachi Biennale (KB). It is a chilly January evening and the lower entrails of the building are transformed into a darkened gallery. Its coils of staircases are hijacked by a silent SM Raza and Salman Hasan languishing and dipping their feet in ruby and orange powder. And then you alight to a giant screen reproducing Zubeida Agha’s Miro-like cityscape of Karachi — it’s from the 50’s but has the innovation of an Ipad. We haven’t even reached the main hall, just like we haven’t reached the actual Biennale (it’s in October). This is a curtain raiser, and what a creature it has unveiled!
The Karachi Biennale Trust (KBT) has spent over a year in imaginative and rewarding projects — like ‘Art for Life’, where German Media artists taught Orangi’s school kids (among other things) to make electricity from rotten fruit, or the biggest public art project of its kind, chaired by KBT trustee and artist Masuma Halai Khwaja — ‘Reel on Hai’, that invites the creative and willing to turn 100 cable reels into objects of beauty and function to sprinkle throughout the city.
Performative piece by by Joshinder Chaggar
Niilofur Farrukh calls the Biennale “a link between visitors experiencing art for the first time and seasoned art enthusiasts”
Today the KBT are sharing their vision with the city. Chief Curator Amin Gulgee is here: the pioneer of performance art in Pakistan, enabling artists to experiment with space, the body and the transaction with the viewer. For the Biennale he has invited over a 100 national and international artists, as well as architects, filmmakers, and fashion and theatre professionals, to interpret the theme “Witness.”
We duck into the inner recesses of Frere Hall to see some performative works and a video. This is where Amin Gulgee shines: his extraordinary gift for putting together art that transports. In one corner Sara Pagganwala sits cross-legged, potions of colour before her, injecting the air with neon smoke; artist Muhammad Ali knits on a grandparent’s rocking chair, face shrouded by a honeycomb of butterflies. Benish Mahmood’s “Forget Me Not, Basheereya!” (Originally from the seminal “The 70’s: the Radioactive Decade” show curated by Amin Gulgee and Niilofur Farrukh) leaves you teary-eyed and in another time of martial law, sexiness, and promise.
Public art project 'Reel on Hai'
Curtain-raiser performative works
Scheduled for October, the Karachi Biennale’s main venue is the 160-year-old NJV School, a building that housed the first National Assembly of Pakistan and sits in the old and busy heart of Karachi. KB CEO and art critic Niilofur Farrukh calls it “a link between visitors experiencing art for the first time and seasoned art enthusiasts. I see the Biennale as a pop-up museum of contemporary art.” The Biennale casts its net so wide and in such unchartered waters that explaining its significance and facets to government men with straight hair partings and suited corporates is tricky. The organisers seem to recognise this and did more “show” versus “tell”. On a giant screen, the KBT team and members of the artist fraternity are seen talking about the Biennale and the art’s link with social change. Residents of the city will get to see museum-quality art, free of charge, and they can bring their kids too. A major aspect of the Biennale is the involvement and activation of the youth, with activities planned for schools.
On one wall a series of scrolls that chart Karachi’s art journey from Partition (1947) to today. Created by Niilofur Farrukh, it is a tribute to the romance between art and Karachi. In the late 40’s we see writer and critic Attiya Faizi and artist Faizi Rahamin — a dazzling artsy couple, arriving in Karachi on invitation by Jinnah himself. It’s a beautiful thought: Jinnah knew Pakistan needed them. There are saloons and gatherings with artists, musicians and intellectuals collecting and colluding. The modernists set up camp here, and it was a time when giants like Bashir Mirza and Ismail Gulgee reigned, and Ali Imam - part emperor, part mentor - commanded Karachi’s art territories. Zubeida Agha returned from Paris, flinging Modernism in Karachi’s face. Galleries sprouted around the city, the largest network in the country. “Karachi’s narrative is different from Lahore,” Niilofur Farrukh says, “less institution-based, more personality-based.” If the performative works were an appetiser for the actual Biennale, the timeline is a hint of KB’s discursive muscle — with Niilofur Farrukh and Aquila Ismail heralding the way. The Biennale aims to have a conversation with the city: it will engage scholars, artists, intellectuals and thinkers, and over the last two years has conducted programming on the transformative power of art.
Sara Pagganwalla in her performative piece at the launch
Frere Hall, Karachi, where the curtain-raiser took place
The Biennale casts its net so wide and in such unchartered waters that explaining it to government men with straight hair partings and suited corporates is tricky
Under Frere Hall’s massive arch, presiding over the entire event is dancer Joshinder Chaggar on a black pedestal, a silent goddess with a shock of dark hair, palms blazing red in her performative work “The Autumn Leaves”. She makes an incredible mural.
The star of the evening was Karachi, in all her dusty, quarreling glory. You could see her in the love the team had for her. “It’s a city of dreams and nightmares” Amin Guglee calls his hometown. There is a possessiveness: mera sheher. When Niilofur Farrukh referenced the ceiling in her welcome speech, some people looked up for the first time at Sadequain’s unfinished, beautiful sky. In a galaxy of figures exploring ilm and amal, it echoes the ethos of Pakistan’s most literate city. You can see the self-proclaimed “artist of the gutter” wanted to do so much more but life ended before the painting did. On that cool January evening, you left wanting more — more of the art, the history chat, the nod to a different Karachi and the hope for a new one. It made you feel something was being born, and it was just beginning to flap its wings.
Zehra Hamdani Mirza is a Karachi based writer and artist
