Meeting at Murree

In a building just a few furlongs away from the Government House Murree, where negotiations between the Taliban and Afghan government were said to have been held recently, negotiations of another kind are taking place. Not much hyped or reported, the other exchange is as exclusive and anticipated as the secret dialogue between the two groups from the war-torn country. This meeting is the Murree Museum Artist Residency held from July 26 July-August 16, 2015. Organised by Saba Khan at a private house, six artists are participating including Madyha Jan Leghari who is the coordinator of the Residency. In its second year, the Residency runs smoothly at a venue that has sufficient studio space and living facilities. Like everywhere else, the artists coming from various backgrounds (Pakistan, Japan and South Korea/Australia) communicate with each other as they are exposed to a different environment away from their usual workplace. Everyone knows that a diplomatic discourse does not produce immediate results; it contributes towards building an atmosphere of trust, reconciliation and future contacts. Likewise, artists who come for a residency talk, spend time at a new surrounding (they may not make a sufficient body of quality work) but the experience eventually helps them in creating works that are different from their usual practice, and which certainly have a mark of the time spent at a faraway site. That faraway place is Murree. So when you leave your home in Karachi or Lahore in the heat of July, you are conscious of moving to a new place. But on top of the hills, you’re pulled away from the normal calendar of summer months, and transported to a cooler zone where you’re expected to wear warm clothes. All participants know that soon they would have to go back to reality -- of hot and humid days. The residency at Murree is therefore almost like a dream -- a collective dream in which the organiser, coordinator, artists and occasional guest critics participate; and this parallel reality offers something drastically different from one’s normal circumstances. It provides a mental space to move beyond, away from and above one’s usual setting, and experience another dimension of the labyrinthine of creativity. At the Murree Residency, artists Seher Naveed, Seema Nusrat, Shakila Haider, Hyun Ju Kim and Hiroshi Tachibana are living far from their homes, studios and expected art practices. They are in constant contact with Madyha Jan Leghari, the coordinator and Saba Khan, the organiser of the Residency along with residents of Murree, but no one knows what would come out of their sojourn of so many days in that hill-top.

Like children of a family inheriting similar features and sharing the same upbringing and education perform in a completely opposite manner, artists gathered at a residency end up working in a different manner too. Some start working diligently the first evening they settle in; others take a longer time to explore the place before venturing on a work of art. At Murree Residency as well as at other places, it is presumed that artists won’t be making an intangible object (art), but their input can be of an ephemeral nature which may be stored in memories and preserved in images and has a life of a few hours or days. Perhaps, the best part of an artists’ residency is conveying this -- that art is more of an experience than an object. In most cases, what comes out of these residencies are works which can not be owned. In the case of installations and performances, when artists travel from their comfort zone to another location, their practice is also altered. At a residency in particular, it is more likely because of short period of stay, unavailability of materials and the problem of transportation of large objects etc. Thus artists are inclined to focus on something that is in the league of a shared experience rather than a private piece. No one knows what would be produced in Murree apart from some paintings on paper by Hiroshi, miniatures by Shakila or drawings by Kim. But one is sure the works coming out of that atmosphere of hanging clouds waiting just outside the bedroom windows won’t, hopefully, belong to that sort. The works may offer a new reading of art and life, as the two can not be disentangled. Despite all these debates on art for commercial or sublime motives, today the art world and world at large face a crucial issue. Browsing the social media or leafing through the newspapers, one is conscious of the fascination for ‘selfies’ in our surroundings. The popularity of selfie is not just a consequence of a mechanical mode; it is about the fading sense of a shared space and the realisation of being alone in a new world. In the realm of art too, when identities of all sorts, including national, regional or ideological are diminishing, artists are enjoying immense freedom. At the same time, the Murree Museum Artist Residency and other such gatherings remind us that eventually man is a social animal regardless of how unsocial an artist may prove to be.