Category Archives: Karachi biennale 2017

Nusserwanjee Courtyard and IVS Gallery.

A haven of shadow and green is Nusserwanjee Courtyard at the Indus Valley School of Art & Architecture. It was the location for two performances which were to be received by a growing and expecting crowd of students, which was kept waiting a bit by a van of visitors from abroad which struggled to arrive. In which case one is well advised to wander from the courtyard into the lush gardens.

Students waiting for a performance to happen in Nusserwanjee Courtyard at the Indus Valley School of Art & Architecture during the Karachi biennale of 2017.

After some time, I decided however to use my last day in Karachi to continue to other locations, without having seen the performances Healing by Naadia Kaabi-Linke and Samina Islam and OVERxCOME by Miro Craemer. One may find images of them elsewhere on the web. I did want to share here the beauty of the location and an impression of the waiting crowd of students. At the school there is also IVS gallery, which aims to have art, design and architecture meet, where artist Ali Kazim was showing an untitled work made of hair and hairspray, put together with some help of an invisible thread. The work was first conceived in 2011, but I saw someone running around it with a canister of fresh hairspray.

Installation of an untitled work made of hair, hairspray and invisible thread by Ali Kazim in IVS Gallery at the Indus School of Art & Architecture during the Karachi biennale 2017.

Nusserwanjee Courtyard at the Indus Valley School of Art & Architecture, a venue for performances during the Karachi biennale of 2017.

Return to the Greenbox Museum Report’s Karachi Biennale 2017 page.

 

 

Elephant in the room. A performance by Muhammad Ali (Mirchi) at the Karachi biennale 2017.

The stage, the walls and all the furniture was wrapped in wallpaper or cloth featuring two elephants fighting, their trunks entangled. It is about ‘peace and tranquillity’ is, when I asked him what these elephanst meant to him, how an official of the venue landed for me his interpretation. The artist probably, or a hired actor, was on the stage wrapped entirely in the same cloth as everything else and simply moved about a bit as perhaps and elephant standing at ease in a comfortable swamp might do. Indeed, it was peaceful. The artist-beast and spent some time on the couch waiting for two vans with guests to arrive, but the charming result of that delay was that his performance happened exactly as young pupils, both boys and girls were leaving class – there is a school on the upper floors of the same institution. With curiosity the children joined the front ranks of spectators and added to what I witnessed on this second day of the Karachi biennale 2017.

The performance ‘Elephant in the room’ by Muhammad Ali at Jamshed Memorial Hall during the Karachi biennale 2017. © Reserved.

Return to the Karachi biennale 2017 page on Greenbox Museum’s website.