“The earth’s been covered with borders, the sky filled with flags. But there are only two nations - that of the living and that of the dead." -- Mia Couto.

There may be a third nation, of art -- a territory that lies between the living and dead. A person makes new work that may lose its worth in a few years whereas art pieces created hundreds or thousands of years ago are still intact, relevant and keep alluring us. Other objects produced for multiple functions also survive their makers, like stories, songs, buildings, utensils, coins, weapons. All are now part of museums: some in memory and others in physical space. Every creation of humankind is a bridge between the land of living and the realm of death.

Artists aim to prolong life through the objects they make. Naiza Khan’s project ‘Manora Field Notes’ is one such example. Presently a part of Venice Biennale at the inaugural pavilion of Pakistan, from May 11 to November 24, 2019, the work reveals "the artist’s long-standing and evolving engagement with Manora Island, a peninsula located off the harbour of Karachi". Pakistan pavilion was curated by Zahra Khan and presented by Pakistan National Council of the Arts and the Foundation Art Divvy, with Syed Jamal Shah as the commissioner.

To have a pavilion at the most prestigious biennale of the world is a significant moment for the country, especially when there are pavilions of countries such as Mongolia, Malta, Madagascar, Montenegro, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Kiribati, Seychelles, and San Marino. Another courageous decision in this regard is to present a single artist. So in a space which is not big yet not too far from the main location of Arsenale, the viewer can understand the formal concerns and context of the artist, who has been working with this site for many years; it also appears in her paintings, prints, sculptures and video installations.

Apart from Naiza Khan’s association with this area and her exploring of ideas about colonialism, urbanisation, industrialisation and violence in/of history, viewing the works connected to Manora Island in Venice is a unique, almost uncanny experience. It is literally eye-opening, since in one of her installations (Doorbeen) you have to look through a telescope fabricated by craftsmen of Karachi. Standing on the soil of Venice, what you see through the two lenses is not the outline of St Marco Square’s buildings or the gondolas on the Grand Canal, but streets, houses and bazaars of Karachi, with people engaged in different activities. Hence one’s attention is blurred between two islands -- Venice and Manora.

Perhaps this is the job of an artist -- to translocate you from your immediate surroundings and bring you to another territory. Venice Biennale in its essence is one such exercise. Installed at different parts of the city, the various country pavilions in a sense serve like embassies of their country: a piece of land that belongs to another nation, despite its actual geography. Certain pavilions leave a deeper impact than others like Germany, Japan, Mexico, Republic of South Africa (the latter questions the impact of colonialism and apartheid in a language that is painterly and poetic and hence convincing).

Looking at the works displayed at several national pavilions, one realises that certain countries are obliged to denote/deal with their ‘identity’ (be it of Amazon in the Peruvian pavilion, Pharaonic references in Egyptian, or Gandhi’s imagery at India’s); whereas other works have liberated that postal address. Entering into the pavilion of Czech Republic or seeing works displayed at Switzerland’s pavilion, one notices the artists are not ‘representing’ their country or its past or problems, but are more involved in their individual concerns. Fair enough; because an artist no matter where he comes from is primarily an individual. He or she may be linked with others, yet a free soul.

The curated exhibition Preposition at the Venice Biennale illustrates this fully. Both at the Giardini and Arsenale, works communicate a narrative of the world that lies beyond the demarcation of national identities. For instance, Shilpa Gupta’s work ‘Untitled (Gate)’ 2009, at Giardini, and ‘For, In Your Tongue, I Cannot Fit’, 2017, at Arsenale, one comes across concerns connected to surveillance and grief. At the former location, a large gate "with its exaggerated spikes and protruding metal frame, swings back and forth of its accord, hitting the gallery wall aggressively -- and eventually cracking and breaking it". The simple mechanism conveys the presence and persistence of power, from a structure of secluding a (middle class) housing society to a state that shuts its door to public. Gupta dismantles it as she "relates the strange central shape in the metalwork both to the outline of a territory and ‘a hole in brain’".

Her other work, an installation with papers containing poems, pierced on spike-like stands and sound of those poems recited in a variety of tongues through 100 speakers, conveys "a symphony of recorded voices which speak or sing the verses of 100 poets imprisoned for their work or political positions, from the 7th century to the present day". The sound of these verses in the space, dark and desolate, adds to the content of discontented people who are surviving and resisting through poetry.

Communities that are not found on the global map of progress, investment and marketing are still making their mark in the world of art and literature. Who could have imagined that two noble laureates will emerge from a small country such as Trinidad and Tobago. Or artists from so-called and now redundant periphery would dominate the world art scene. The curated exhibition at the Venice Biennale which includes artists from different parts of the planet affirms this notion. Yet their works are not limited to their location; these remind of the human condition and our helplessness in this regard.

Like Naiza Khan, who "uses an archival document as the starting point for ‘Hundreds of Birds Killed’… A factual record of the aftermath of storms across British India. Today, the cities listed in the report are spread across three nations". Along with the sound ("narration of this report by a female voice"), Khan creates the outlines of those cities (Memensingh, Jamalpur, Lahore, Amritsar, Kolkata, Faisalabad, Siliguri, Chittagong, Motihari, Sukkur, Jhansi) into brass maps with objects, i.e., ordinary toys, replicas of sea life (fish, seashell etc.), animals, tools and weapons, stuck on the surface. As if in the wake of an ecological disaster. In the exhibition space these look more like amulets and sacred items, with some kind of magic -- or "colonial history and collective memory" attached to them.

Her space also includes a four-channel film installation ‘Sticky Rice and Other Stories’. In one part a man pushes "miniaturised models of historic and contemporary boats" on his cart, colourful, carefully arranged, and bright too due to the lights attached to those structures. This assemblage of vessels on a cart against the backdrop of sea at night affirms how our reality is manufactured and projected.

Like all waters of the world meet, despite being contaminated by one country, culture or commerce, all islands too have a connection. Putting ‘Manora Field Notes’ is not a way of intruding in another space; it is an attempt to bring an island to another one, merging both at a meeting place -- the Venice Biennale.