They say that change is the only constant in a man’s life. These changes also become a reason of his detachment from his origin....
art
They say that change is the only constant in a man’s life. These changes also become a reason of his detachment from his origin. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a Genevan philosopher, in his 1783 essay ‘Reveries of the Solitary Walker’, speaks of the historical processes of change that have resulted in man’s estrangement from his ‘natural’ (physical) self, as well as from other human and non-human beings. While Rousseau presents the act of returning to/communing with nature as an idealised state of contentment, awe, and happiness, it is also through this that he is able to conversely reflect on society, human nature, and politics. Keeping this in mind, Zarmeene Shah, an independent curator and critic based in Karachi, recently exhibited a solo show ‘Archeologies of Tomorrow’ by Sohail Zuberi at Koel Gallery, Karachi. With the exhibition, she interpreted Zuberi’s work of art by referring it with the literary work of Rousseau and theoretical analysis of Michel De Certeau who was a French scholar. The exhibition was attended by a number of socialites and media persons who came to admire the unique form of art by Zuberi.
Sohail Zuberi is a graphic designer, photographer and visual artist based in Karachi. He graduated from the Karachi School of Art in 1992. Along with his independent practice, Zuberi has been associated with academia for the past sixteen years. He was the head of the Communication Design department at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture 2012-2015, and has taught design, fine art and photography at the University of Karachi and the Textile Institute of Pakistan.
Sohail Zuberi engages in the quiet survey of a two-kilometer stretch of beach in Karachi - just off the popular and often populated strip known as Seaview, or Clifton beach - ‘unearthing’ modern-day ‘archaeological relics’ through acts of chance and encounter, exploration and excavation. Meticulously recorded, documented, and collected, this investigation finds at its heart the idea of walking as a primary means of discovery and engagement. For years, Zuberi has walked every Sunday morning along this strip of Karachi’s coast, engaging with the landscape in processes of surveying, investigating, collecting, and archiving. While Rousseau presents the act of returning to/communing with nature as an idealised state of contentment, awe, and happiness, it is also through this that he is able to conversely reflect on society, human nature, and politics, much like Zuberi in the discourse that he engenders through his engagement with the beach, the sea, and the objects that wash up on the shore of this small, quiet strip. In Zuberi’s work, these found objects become a mirror to the city - evidence washed up by the sea - a testament to man’s relationship with his natural and urban environments.
Zarmeene Shah also recalls the theory ‘Walking in the City’ (from The Practice of Everyday Life), in which Michel De Certeau (French scholar) refers to the act of walking as an individualistic action, one through which pedestrians - the citizens of the city, as a subjective mass - are able to give meaning to their urban landscape; through the deployment of their imagination onto it, in the way that they move about the city, creating individual routes and maps, producing new possibilities of discovery and discourse. Thus, in transcribing themselves onto the city, they enact a process of ‘linking acts and footsteps, opening meanings and directions’ in order to create ‘liberated spaces that can be occupied’. It is in exactly such a process of meaning-making that Zuberi engages, acting at once as surveyor, researcher, documenter, and (emancipated) subject, amassing an archive of a future archaeology that speaks of the complex layers embedded within ecologies and economies, societies and traditions, beliefs and politics.
In the documentation of debris washed upon the beach, Zuberi plays the role of a modern ‘archaeologist’ armed with contemporary tools: photography is done singularly with the camera of his mobile phone, and the extensive archive of pictures is then meticulously categorised and digitally archived. Alternatively, the objects that he collects (recovers) are carefully ‘unearthed’, ‘excavated’ from rapid immersion into the shifting sand, vigilantly cleaned, and then carefully mounted, through minimally invasive processes, to be subsequently presented as historical objects, with deep narratives. There are several points of poignancy within this gesture, first and foremost that of the artist’s collaboration with chance; giving the means to that which will be discovered, presenting a different scheme of possibilities each week, countless variations of alternatives for discovery, made possible through precise collusions of time, tide, and events. Each object carries its own narrative, whether emerging from sunken (mainly fishing) boats, or from the endless debris left behind by those that frequent the more popular parts of the city’s coastline (one of the few forms of public spaces for entertainment remaining for the citizens of
Karachi to occupy), or as a result of rituals and beliefs, sacrifice and sacredness.
Sohail Zuberi’s work then manifests as evidence of his long-standing and continued relationship with this site, posing a complex series of questions, contradictions, and problematics embodied within the city, reflective of its life (both human and nonhuman, natural and urban). At once, he is artist, archaeologist, environmentalist, archivist, sociologist, historian, geologist, surveyor, researcher, and storyteller.
Where the drone’s eye survey videos of the beach he investigates register as records, they are also intentionally magnificent and beautiful, contradicting ground realities. Where the objects are presented as ruins, artefacts, and ‘relics’ from an archaeological dig of/in the future, they are also presented as found, aesthetic works, conferred with new meanings and affects.
‘Archaeologies of Tomorrow’ then stands as much a mirror between the city and the sea, as it is a lens through which to view the relationship of the artist to his city, and the myriad ways in which this is navigated and cultivated. In this, he is then like De Certeau’s walker, able to link ‘acts and footsteps’, and open ‘meanings and directions’ through the act of transcribing the city by how he chooses to walk in it.
Courtesy: ‘Archeoologies of Tomorrow’ by Zarmeene Shah
