Constellations Adrift: Desire and Memory in Karachi`s urban space

Constellations Adrift: Desire and Memory in Karachi`s urban space

Rheinische Institut für Orient- und
Friedrich-Wilhelms- Asienwissenschaften
Universität Bonn
Abteilung für Asiatische und Islamische Kunstgeschichte SS 2015
Vortrag
Naiza Khan
(Visual Artist from Pakistan):
Constellations Adrift:
Desire and Memory in Karachi’s urban space
Mo., 08.06.2015
Beginn: 18:15
Abteilung für Asiatische und Islamische Kunstgeschichte,
Adenauerallee 10, ÜR (EG)
About Naiza Khan:
Naiza Khan trained at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford, and Wimbledon College of Art,
London. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including the 2012 Shanghai Biennale; Hanging Fire at the Asia Society in New York; and her first solo museum exhibition, Karachi Elegies, at the Broad Museum, Michigan, 2013. Khan has participated in several international conferences, and she curated The
Rising Tide: New Directions in Art from Pakistan 1990-2010 at the Mohatta Palace Museum, Karachi in 2010.
She has been Faculty of Visual Art at Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture (1991–2009) and is a
founding member and former co-ordinator of the Vasl Artists’ Collective, Karachi. Khan is a recipient of the
Prince Claus Awards for 2013. She is currently Professional Advisor at the Visual Studies Department,
Karachi University.
Summary:
My interest in public space in Pakistan has led me into a long-term investigation of Manora Island. From
the 18th century onwards, Manora has served as a defense outpost facing the Arabian Sea and forms part
of a small archipelago just off the natural harbour of Karachi. Diverse sites of worship continue to mark
this terrain on human scale. They suggest that a multi-religious community once existed on the island.
Over the years however, I have witnessed a particular kind of development, resulting in the slow erasure of
both the history and natural ecology of the island. A nexus of military and commercial interests have led to
the radical disenfranchisement of Manora’s local populations. The landscape itself – rendered in ruinous
built structures -- pulls me into the materiality of urban strife. Manora evokes the metaphor of a body that
has been gutted and cast away. Through a range of media, my work suggests the building of bodily terrain
itself. My concern here is at once spatial, psychic, and epistemic. Images emerge out of conversations with
the residents of Manora Island. They engage specifically with non-monumental subjects and narratives of
scale. Like the island which stands as a sentry-post, this research has become an observation point that
informs my broader project of examining the port city of Karachi, its urban sprawl, its history, and contested modes of sovereignty.