{"id":20028473,"date":"2019-11-15T13:45:42","date_gmt":"2019-11-15T08:15:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thethirdpole.net\/?p=28473"},"modified":"2020-12-07T17:47:49","modified_gmt":"2020-12-07T12:17:49","slug":"ecology-power-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/nature\/ecology-power-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Ecology, power and art at the Karachi Biennale"},"content":{"rendered":"

Perched in a coastal \u2013 mostly reclaimed \u2013 neighbourhood in Karachi, the Jehangir Kothari Promenade stretches over a recently constructed, shortly abandoned, nearly occupied, and narrowly \u2018recovered\u2019 Bagh Ibne Qasim<\/a>. The sprawling park is a microcosm of the city\u2019s political ecology. Its history is coloured by intrusive development and privations issuing from alleged collaborations<\/a> between corporate, political, and bureaucratic bosses.<\/p>\n

On 26th<\/sup> October, after nearly half a decade of disuse and ungreening, Karachi\u2019s mayor reopened the bagh (park) <\/em>for the public during the inauguration of Karachi Biennale 2019 (KB19). Ambitious in scale, this second iteration of \u201cPakistan\u2019s largest international contemporary art event\u201d boasted 89 projects by 98 artists. Curator, Muhammad Zeeshan and co-curators, Rabia Ali and Noor Ahmed, used the bagh<\/em> and six other venues \u2013 IVS Gallery, Alliance Fran\u00e7aise, Frere Hall, VM Gallery, NED University City Campus, and Karachi Zoo \u2013 as spaces to create a visual narrative around their thematic lament, \u201cFlight Interrupted: Eco-Leaks from the Invasion Desk.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Ali Kazim’s “The Conference of the Birds” [image by: Umme Hani Imani]<\/figcaption><\/figure>The curators of this second instalment invited artists to tap into the \u201ccultural roots\u201d of the \u201ccontemporary crisis of unsustainability,\u201d in turn promising to construct an \u201ceco-archive of personal and national memory.\u201d Comprehensive, impassioned, and poetic, KB19\u2019s official thematic statement<\/a> was also mystifying. The thematic framework \u2013 shortened to \u201cEcology and the Environment\u201d \u2013 is, nonetheless, of immense importance due to its association with global imperatives of sustainability, environmental protection, and climate action.<\/p>\n

The CEO, Niilofur Farrukh, acknowledged that critiques of relevance and accessibility drawn by the previous biennale shaped the trust\u2019s affinity for Zeeshan and his proposed theme. \u201cIssues of Climate Change have,\u201d she said, \u201cbeen important to global discourse for several years.\u201d With their new curator and theme, KBT thus hoped to establish a \u201cproximity to the city and its people\u201d and to stir discourse about how \u201ctheir cultural ethos and sociological and socioeconomic realities\u201d relate to global contexts.<\/p>\n

The utility of \u2018eco-art\u2019 is, nonetheless, debatable. Some, like art historian, T.J. Demos, are optimistic that contemporary art can, with its \u201cpotential to both rethink politics and politicise art\u2019s relation to ecology,\u201d furnish to environmentalism  Eschewing an \u201cenvironmentalism of affluence\u201d and a decolonising of lens and methodology are, however, important first steps<\/a>. Sceptics like the ecologist Martin Spray, draw attention to the limitations of contemporary art. Spray, among others, posits that environmental art is largely \u201ctenuous\u201d and \u201cembarrassingly hyped.\u201d Oblique in its expression, unorthodox in its aesthetic, and irregular in its materiality and form, contemporary art is too alienating to successfully communicate the urgency of environmentalism<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Their dissent is an important reminder of factors that limit contemporary art\u2019s ability to position itself as a vehicle of public discourse, leave alone change. This is especially true in Pakistan where \u2018fine art\u2019 has been infamously confined to elite galleries and opulent drawing rooms.<\/p>\n

\"\"
“The Mangrove Project”, an immersive group show by Noorjehan Bilgrami, Tariq Qaiser, Marvi Mazhar, Sadia Salim, Zarmeene Shah, and Sohail Zuberi [image by: Umme Hani Imani]<\/figcaption><\/figure>The Mangrove Project<\/a><\/em>, an immersive group show by Noorjehan Bilgrami, Tariq Qaiser, Marvi Mazhar, Sadia Salim, Zarmeene Shah, and Sohail Zuberi at the IVS Gallery, was among KB19\u2019s most credible responses to Spray\u2019s line of criticism. Approaching Karachi\u2019s fragile mangrove ecosystem from different standpoints, the artists\u2019 carefully researched challenge to invasive development and expansive reclamation was urgent but optimistic, and at once scientific but aesthetic.<\/p>\n

A sprawling line-map marked Karachi\u2019s mangrove forests, high-definition photos and videos showcased their majestic dynamism, and a video series documented how their destruction impacts local communities and ecosystems. A passage constructed from found bark, detailed drawings of economically viable species, delicate porcelain plant studies, and fabric dyed in pigments obtained from mangrove trees testified to the legion of aesthetic possibilities that these endangered ecosystems contain.<\/p>\n

\"\"
An exhibit of “The Mangrove Project” by Noorjehan Bilgrami [image by: Umme Hani Imani]<\/figcaption><\/figure>At the exhibit, a first-year medical student generously explained some finer scientific points of mangrove systems, all while musing on the fear of \u201cmankind taking over nature.\u201d The encounter was a gentle reminder that attributing credence to scientific awareness critically fosters urgent responses to the ecological hazards we face. Art that hopes to contribute to this effort must, in Greta Thunberg\u2019s words,both \u201clisten to the scientists\u201d and motivate its audience to do so.<\/p>\n

\"\"
A part of “The Mangrove Project” by Zarmeene Shah and Sohail Zuberi [image by: Umme Hani Imani]<\/figcaption><\/figure>Granted its status as a group show, The Mangrove Project <\/em>nonetheless highlighted the need for a comparable coherence, immersiveness, and fidelity to the theme\u2019s demands at other sites.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Abdullah Syed\u2019s layering of currency on \u2018money\u2019 plant leaves was provocative but arguably simplistic [image by: Umme Hani Imani]<\/figcaption><\/figure>Despite housing intricately crafted works, Alliance Francaise stood out as passive. Abdullah Syed\u2019s layering of currency on \u2018money\u2019 plant leaves was provocative but arguably simplistic. The process behind Alice Kettle\u2019s textile sculpture, Forest<\/em>, was culturally optimistic, sociologically progressive, and ecologically sensitive. Even so, I wondered if Kettle\u2019s message could successfully translate without the accompanying didactic. And though works by Ali Kazim and Meher Afroz carried direct literary, historical, or political references to ecological annihilation, neither demanded the proactiveness or the close moral and intellectual considerations that our relationship with the biosphere requires.<\/p>\n

VM Gallery suffered for a lack of coherence, although Libby Hague\u2019s On the Wondrous Sea<\/em> delivered an impact. Simple in its motifs, accessible in its form, and urgent in its expression, the mural illustrating the widespread displacement of humans from the very landscape they have annihilated carried the potential to captivate young children and adults alike.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Libby Hague\u2019s “On the Wondrous Sea” illustrated the widespread displacement of humans from the very landscape they have annihilated [image by: Umme Hani Imani]<\/figcaption><\/figure>Naima Dadabhoy\u2019s installation, Karachi Patterns<\/em>, placed in the single-room exhibition at NED, was charming for its lithe redolence. Tapping into the scents and physicality of preserved natural materials \u2013 threads, coffee, spices, and tea \u2013 her sculpture appeared like a wind-chime of memory. How far the romanticism of nature can motivate a proactive outlook on the science of its preservation is, of course, debatable. If a grim urgency about futures of scarcity and desolation is indeed eco-art\u2019s imperative, then Larissa Sansour and Soren Lind\u2019s thirty minute film, In the Future, They Ate from the Finest Porcelain<\/em>, roused the needed discomfort. Traversing between genres of poetry and science-fiction, the artists offered a sepulchral lens on the politics of preservation, and the artfulness with which memory, urgency, and identity can be altered.<\/p>\n

KB19 organisers seemed aware of their need to forego a passive deference to the power of art and assumptions about the universality of their message. The goal they claimed was: \u201cto go to the people, not make them come to us.\u201d Choosing the Zoo, which is among Karachi’ most frequented public places, with a high footfall of children, was a step in that direction.<\/p>\n

Considering the need for a decolonised lens, which KB itself recognises, it is difficult to overlook the zoo\u2019s inherent status as a place of exoticism. It is not simply a matter of their colonial origins<\/a> as sites where \u201cplaces, animals, and people were ordered through a Western lens;\u201d zoos perpetuate acceptance for a chauvinism that allows powerful human beings to desecrate ecosystems. No matter how decolonised the language of its marketing or progressive its design, the zoo is inescapably a site through which children are trained to treat animals as \u2018objects\u2019 of their \u2018gaze\u2019\u2014entertaining, educational, unusual.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Irfan Gul Dahri\u2019s family of goat picnickers in the zoo was a quirky reminder of how we negate animal sentience, and of how strangely humans prioritise their needs over biodiversity [image by: Umme Hani Imani]<\/figcaption><\/figure>Irfan Gul Dahri\u2019s family of goat picnickers in the zoo was a quirky reminder of how we negate animal sentience, and of how strangely humans prioritise their needs over biodiversity. Drawing up extinct birds from vibrant pixels on caged screens, Ranu Mukherjee\u2019s The Dead and the Wild<\/em> added a layer of irony to this display of eco-art in what Mahera Omar calls Karachi\u2019s \u201cbare Victorian-era concrete pit.\u201d The exhibit was both an ode to animals we have killed and a caricature of our age in which the easiest way of witnessing nature is virtual. Meanwhile, Munawar Ali Syed\u2019s sculpture of a baby elephant entrapped in lined-paper \u2013 a symbol of the cruelty of human consumption \u2013 might draw young children\u2019s sympathies.<\/p>\n

The biennale has made interesting choices that spotlight its position within Karachi\u2019s political ecology. Opening with the \u201creactivation\u201d of the bagh<\/em> and placing nearly half of KB19\u2019s works there is such a choice, specifically because of the governmental support it required.<\/p>\n

This proximity to power became uncomfortable when they implicitly defended the government\u2019s attempt to quash Adeela Suleman\u2019s politicised interpretation of ecology<\/a>, which led to the sealing of exhibits at Frere Hall. Events unfolding from Suleman\u2019s indictment of the powers behind \u201c[our] city\u2019s mercurial landscape\u201d revealed that substantive debate about the city, its environment, and its political ecology remains limited by hesitations to challenge its most powerful stakeholders.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Amin Gulgee’s “Impossible Growth” [image by: Umme Hani Imani]<\/figcaption><\/figure>The commentary on power and resistance in works at the bagh was thus interesting. Amin Gulgee\u2019s towering installation, Impossible Growth<\/em>, with copper leaves bursting through a steel trussing, seemed to play an interesting pun.  It could, from a thematic perspective, represent the myriad ways in which nature endures in urban spaces, and makes an unannounced presence through layered trappings of metal and concrete. Accompanied by ritualistic elements, it also raised questions about the credence we attribute to omens and the ways myths emerge from and enable power.<\/p>\n

Offering a sweeping spectacle across the promenade, R.M. Naeem\u2019s Open to the Sky<\/em>, also elicited multiple interpretations. A row of fibre-glass heads and bodies composed of chillies seemed like a mass grave of scorched bodies. A closer look at differently positioned heads and the varied shapes and sizes of bodies then implied how complicity can differ based on privilege and power. The artist associated his work with symbols, which, in his words, \u201crepresent powerful sources that have the capacity to shape our world, our environment, and even our minds.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
R M Naeem’s “Open to Sky” [image by: Umme Hani Imani]<\/figcaption><\/figure>Performances at the bagh <\/em>also lent to the lure of spectacle. Victorine Mueller occasioned astonishment by enacting her conviction in the possibility of a more meditative and harmonised \u201crelationship with nature.\u201d Mueller, who sat elevated inside a life-sized PVC elephant, hoped to transcend simple statements \u201cdemand[ing] common ecological responsibility.\u201d Simply seeing her enclosed in plastic, however, induced instant claustrophobia\u2014reminiscent of the countless creatures that plastic waste asphyxiates.<\/p>\n

While concluding my visit to the bagh,<\/em> which I long lived beside but could not enter, I paused to question whether the professed optimism of its reactivation sufficed to blur the contradictions of Karachi\u2019s ecology, of the park\u2019s contentious grounds, and of KB19 itself. Thunberg\u2019s words while rejecting the Nordic Council\u2019s environmental award propose a possible answer. She reminded the world about the perils of \u201cbeautiful words\u201d and the perniciousness of the pretty picture. And, thus reinforced that the climate movement requires recognition of scientific consensus and concerted institutional action, as opposed to self-laudatory celebrations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Karachi Biennale 2019, with its focus on ecology, raised questions of whether art can spark change, and also showcased how a proximity to power can undermine that effort, writes Umme Hani Imani<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2194,"featured_media":20037998,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[764],"tags":[511,523,539],"hashtags":[],"country":[20000112],"class_list":["post-20028473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nature","tag-biodiversity","tag-conservation","tag-endangered-species","country-pakistan"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nEcology, power and art at the Karachi Biennale | Dialogue Earth<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Karachi Biennale 2019, with its focus on ecology, raised questions of whether art can spark change, and also showcased how a proximity to power can undermine that 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