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About time that the Karachi Biennale will be finishing exhibitions in a couple of days, which rolled its way to the city with art and pieces curated by domestic and foreign artists.
With its debut theme 'Witness', the exhibition has come with public art and bringing masses to public heritage— mostly venues that are attention deprived.
The exhibition is clustered with 12 different locations—kicking off exhibitions, film screenings, live performances, educational activities, and dialogues contributed from more than 150 artists.
Coming across the Jamshed Memorial Hall, rebuilt in 1955, was once home to Karachi Theosophical Society. The classrooms on the rooftop that once opened to a dry verandah, there is calligraphy and graffiti by Sanki King.
Steered way to NJV Government High School to view a Sonya Batla creation of a gazebo embellished with used bottles, bandages, wood scraps, pomegranates and more scraps.
Rest of the corridors hold more C- prints, canvas, and a set of corpse that was laid as one among the venue’s highlight.
Another installation stood with two identical mannequins close to a conclusion that selfie-addiction is headway to rational suicide.
Pioneer Book House managed to surprise the visitors with its compact space yet tendency to adjust a streetlight smashing through walls, which in turn raised concerns of ‘whether art or vandalism’ among most visitors and online observers.
"Vandalism is how this art installation at the Pioneer Book House should be described. The owners of the place told me they had no idea that this is what the installation was going to be like; the walls of this heritage building got ruined during the process," a visitor wrote online.
Criticism added that the book owner thought the artist would have thought about the space, about what they’re doing.
Sadequain Gallery, Frere Hall
A maze of mannequins depicting a theme of systemic oppression is one big gun at the venue— you get to write on them and you get to read what others left.
An installation of schoolbags placed on the floor, each bag playing recordings of children, elaborating how their mindset function— of a kid belonging to a government school or a private institute or a Cambridge kid.
The installations also include Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy’s collection of 360 visuals.
-Claremont House-
Wall-paneled display of screenshots the artist took during video calls mother was another with sentiments at the venue.
Plastic disposables assembled as shrubbery, depicting how the world embraces the disguised as well as the apparent ecological threats.
Another room held Afshar Malik’s work ‘I am the eyes, she told me once’, archival C-prints, and Aisha Abid Hussain’s archival print on Hahnemuhle photo labeled ‘Two not together’ (2014).
From what's more to come from the team, the Karachi Biennale plans to exhibit every two years; leading participants into an untouched fount on Karachi's rich culture.
