Curatorial Narrative

Home to Pakistan’s vibrant multi ethno-religious and cultural hub, Karachi’s six districts are an interesting blend of the urban and the local – often along hybrid lines giving rise to glocal culture. Spanning some two dozen churches which form the Roman archidioecesis of Karachi in the vibrant, christen, southern part of Karachi, including the sprawling St. Patrick’s, all the way to the waters of the Keamari on the farthest West bordered by the mangroves, to Nanak Wara with its rich Sikh and Hindu heritage, periphered by Kharadar, one of Karachi’s oldest areas, where life seems to go on in another era, to ramshackle alleys housing Bohri Bazaar and the Empress Market of the Central District, to the historical colonial architecture now converted to city courts and government buildings, Karachi is testimony, in the words of the Urbanist Jane Jacobs, to the city’s everyday street-ballet.

Over the past few years, Karachi’s ever growing violence has led to considerable consternation amongst the city’s youth. Exploitation of the city’s fault-lines (sectarian, ethnic, cultural, socio-economic, political and religious, amongst others) have led the city’s residents to exist in fear of exploring the city and its heritage, thereby mitigating potential opportunities for the residents to engage and reclaim Karachi.

‘Yeh Hai Karachi’ exhibition features the works of 372 students from across the city, created over two intensive cycles of photography and film workshops.

Covering 6 districts, the students have built narratives towards the central themes of Peace, Tolerance and Global Citizenship.

The exhibit spanning these six districts will look at narratives of inter-community harmonies, conflicts and the intermingling of myriad cultures; in an attempt to bridge and understand sociocultural fissures between several areas and examine the emerging culture of public art with the exhibit spanning several spatial temporalities in the city.

 






Commune Artist Colony, an alternative artist space in Karachi came
up to be our main space for the exhibit - after many discussions
against a traditional gallery setting.

Commune is situated in Sadiq Goddam, a colony of old warehouses.
It is surrounded by the sounds and lights of urban karachi and the
colours and chaos of Miskeen Galli. A creative den for young emerging artists, Commune served as the perfect backdrop for a large scale
unconventional exhibition.

Several other public buildings and spaces were identifed where we wanted to run parallel exhibits and interventions. These were
transient places where people experience the diasporic everyday and invited locals to become a part of the work and its various
interpretations against the urban context.

The decision to use a warehouse as an exhibition space opened up many dynamic possibilities for us. We envisioned the space as an open structure with many different pathways around it. The exhibition plan was made up of different spatial components:

The beams on the ceilings of the warehouse were used to suspend large photographs. One of the main walls was covered in length with a mirror and we decided to keep it as it replayed the event inside with interesting reflections of movement and scale. An abacus that would serve as an interactive piece and would rearrange two different photographic compositions on either side.








Five light boxes were constructed of contrasting images and a large scale lit-up cube with acrylic sheets and photographs printed on vinyl stickers. Side walls covered in collages of smaller photographs, that were carefully and thematically arranged after several edits in elongated vertical panels.

Although, most of the work was shown in the main warehouse building, the exhibit was also made to wander through the alleyways outside with projections of photographs and films on colourful shutters and an adjoining smaller space next to the building which hosted film screenings, talks and workshops.