Five years before Waheeda Baloch stood on Bagh Ibne Qasim’s Katrak Band Stand as curator of the Fourth Karachi Biennale (KB24)—with the sun setting before her, and the biennale beginning¾ she was a participating artist at the same location, for…
In the late 1700s, wealthy Europeans eating from pewter plates died when they consumed tomatoes. For over a hundred years they feared the fruit, ignorant that their tableware combined with a tomato’s acidity caused lead poisoning12. In the subcontinent, brass…
In 1944 a spiky haired boy tried teaching himself swimming, using a clay pot for assistance in the West Bengal River. Abul Mansoor Ahmed—as he was then known—was curious and regularly in trouble. As an adult he would do weighty…
In a drama played out in three acts, a woman frolics in an overgrown Eden. Her skin is the colour of patina on copper; fleshy and defiant, she reaches for the fruits above. Radiating and immersive, the triptych is artist Farazeh Syed’s spin on the…
Through his exhibition ‘Unrealized’, held last year at Canvas Gallery Karachi, artist and curator Adeel uz Zafar delved into the deceptive completeness of artworks, emphasizing the intricate and ongoing process hidden behind the finished facade. Engaging in profound dialogues, around…
If you mark truth on a timeline, who chooses the starting point? Since October 2023, newsrooms and academic campuses particularly in the West, have been accused of taking sides in the Israel-Palestine conflict. “I don’t think it’s the ‘Israel-Gaza war.’…
In Self and Motif, Wajiha Batool, Talia Noor, and Syed Khurram Abbas' works are brought together by comparing and contrasting their approaches to the traditional miniature. The works exist in a world that often divides cultures into watertight labels, denying…
Companion of insomnia and isolation, site of sleep and dreams, communion with the divine and the unknown—the night is both a conclusion and adventure. Curated by Mallika Rangoonwala, Let There be Night had seven artists' responses to our experience of…
As I write this, the image of bodies falling from a plane in Kabul’s sky has already been imprinted in the world’s eye. The US have stepped away from a fight around the Euphrates River and the Hindu Kush mountains—ancient…