1 2 3 4 5 LAL JADOO RED MAGIC

Curated by Amin Gulgee and Sara Vaqar Pagganwala

March 15th, 2020, 7:34-9:18 pm, Karachi House, I.I. Chundrigar Road, Karachi

6 7 CONTENTS

10 Love, Death and Prophecy Amin Gulgee

16 A Triumvi-Rite of Passage: Multidimensional Liminality in a Venn Diagram of Performative Experimentation Adam Fahy-Majeed

29 Driveway

69 Staircase and Middle Landing

89 Third Floor A

133 Third Floor B

191 Third Floor C

251 Itinerant

278 The Body is Present Natasha Jozi

282 LAL JADOO: Karachi House Syed Ammad Tahir

284 Strange Art in Strange Times Emaan Mahmud

288 Jadoogiri Mariah Lookman

8 9 and rooms that have the melancholy feeling of having been forgotten for years. My co-curator Sara Pagganwala and I decided that our interventions would be minimal for our installation; we wanted Karachi House to retain its ghosts and memories of the past. LOVE, DEATH The audience for “LAL JADOO” was initially required to walk through the labyrinth of this decaying building seeing the performances and videos and photographs and leave the same way they had come. In their experiential journey, the five senses of taste, smell, touch, sound and sight would be engaged as they meandered within this shadowy building. Visitors would be offered a piece AND PROPHECY of candy sculpture shaped by Lujane Pagganwala for her performance One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish and smell aromas emanating from Syed Ammad’s Tahir’s Loban (Frankincense). They would be urged to hold blindfolded actor Vajdaan Shah’s hand for his Seven Seconds and view and hear Amin Gulgee from the doorway a theatrical performance by Asma Mundrawala, Kaafoori Chirya (Camphor Bird), which referenced a section of Naiyer Masud’s short story “Itr-e-Kafoor” (The Perfume of Camphor).

However, on March 14th, because of the spread of the Coronavirus, public events were cancelled in Karachi’s home province of Sindh. Sara and I agreed that “LAL JADOO” would be closed to the public and viewed on live feed instead: The virtual realm became our “space in-between.”

Curating “LAL JADOO” was an incredibly invigorating endeavor. Sara’s innate sensitivity and ability to think outside the box were a great asset. In my curatorial approach, I am very interested in cross- disciplinary collaboration. We reached out to musicians, actors, graphic designers, students, writers, filmmakers, art historians and fashion designers to contribute ideas. Although many of the artists had engaged with performance as part of their trajectories, others were experimenting with it for the first time. This was an attempt to seek energy from the outside and to bring forth a fresh perspective. Our curatorial process entailed many a conversation trying to find a “vulnerable” space We are always in the space in-between…all the spaces where you are not that was meaningful both for the participant and the project. We are extremely grateful to all those actually home. You have not arrived yet…This is where our mind is most who allowed us to place them outside their comfort zones and gave us their trust. We are also very open. We are alert, we are sensitive, and destiny can happen. We do not thankful to the International Public Art Festival 2020 under whose umbrella this event came. They have any barriers and and we are vulnerable. Vulnerability is important. It gave us their unwavering support during these troubling times. means we are completely alive and this is an extremely important space. “LAL JADOO” translates as “red magic” in English. Although the title is in Urdu, the concept -Marina Abramović of red magic does not exist in the cultural context of South Asia. Red is neither the space of black magic (evil) nor white magic (good); it is, as Abramović said, “where you are not actually home. You have not arrived yet…” In Haruki Murakami’s epic love story 1Q84, the Little People seem to embody this transitional area. He wrote: The vulnerability that Abramović celebrates occupies the space of “LAL JADOO.” “LAL JADOO” (Red Magic) was a happening that took place on the Ides of March, 2020 in a semi-abandoned office We do not know if the so-called Little People are good or evil. This is in a sense something building, Karachi House, on I.I. Chundrigar Road in my home city. I.I. Chundrigar Road is the Wall that surpasses our understanding and our definitions. We have lived with them since Street of Pakistan. In this incongruous location 65 performance works were presented, 43 of which long, long ago—from a time before good and evil existed, when people’s minds were still were live and happened simultaneously between 6:37 pm and 8:37 pm while the other 22 were benighted. 1 photographs and videos of Pakistani performance done in the past. The earliest documentation in this show was by Salima Hashmi. It was a video recording of an episode from Such Gup, a cutting-edge The red field of the “Little People” enigmatically lies between the polarizing black and white spheres. satirical show, which aired on Pakistan Television in 1972. “My performance in the 1970’s stemmed It is meant to be a place where “our minds are most open.” This “open” state of mind is necessary from close investigation into the patterns of living in Pakistan,” stated Hashmi. “I was part of a team when we try to understand what the word magic connotes. Scholars have engaged in extensive that believed in satire as a form of critique which invited our communities into moments of self- debate as to how to define it, with their discussions resulting in intense dispute. Even among those reflection and possible shared hopes for the future.” The dictatorship that came at the end of this throughout history who have described themselves as magicians, there has been no common decade ordered the footage destroyed. The only reason we can still view episodes today is because understanding of what magic is.2 However, one explanation that appealed to me was an alternative the engineers at Pakistan Television hid the recordings for their own private enjoyment. Another approach, associated with the sociologists Marcel Mauss and Émile Durkheim, which employs the footnote to the past were black-and-white photographs by Arif Mahmood of a performance titled term to describe private rites and ceremonies, defined as a communal and organized activity. 3 A Fetish for Beauty by the stylist/hairdresser Tariq Amin. This took place in 1997 in the public lobby of the Pearl Continental, one of the busiest hotels in Karachi. He recalled, “The theme represented The private rites and ceremonies of “LAL JADOO” spoke to me of love, death and prophecy. These androgyny and a depiction of beauty that was anti any existing ideas of perfection and prettiness.” themes appear in Albert Camus’s novel The Plague which was set in the French Algerian town of The 90s were a time of great experimentation in the fashion scene and, after a decade of restriction Oran during an epidemic. Death of course is prevalent in this story and, given the tragic situation, and censorship, a raw energy emerged. religion was questioned. “Thus superstition had usurped the place of religion in the life of our town Karachi House is a surreal space straight out of a David Lynch film. A rusted metal gate and that is why the church in which Peneloux preached his sermon was only three-quarters full.”4 facing I.I. Chundrigar Road opens onto a covered driveway. This long concrete tunnel (10 feet by 59 The need to predict the future was intense among the people of Oran. “Some of these prophetic feet) has open electrical boxes on one side spewing wires and chipping paint on the other. At the writings were actually serialized in our newspapers and read with as much avidity as the love stories end of this passage is a staircase. One flight up, a landing appears with a portion of the wall missing that had occupied these columns in the piping times.”5 The absence of love is omnipresent for two leading onto a balcony overlooking a courtyard below. On the third floor is a maze of passageways of the central characters. Raymond Rambert is a journalist who desperately tries to reunite with his

10 11 wife in Paris while the narrator Dr. Bernard Rieux’s wife leaves Oran for a sanatorium as the book words glued to the floor such as “misogynistic,” “chauvinistic” and “confidence-shattering.” For the opens. At the end of the story, when the quarantine is lifted and people rush back to find their loved artist this text embodied what was in the dark bag. Another critique of male-dominated Pakistani ones, Camus concluded, “They knew now that if there is one thing one can always yearn for and society was by actor Sheikh Safwan Elahi. He, dressed as a “psychopathic dominant husband,” sometimes attain, it is human love.”6 “LAL JADOO” also occurred in a time of plague--a time of love, meticulously drew intricate patterns on large dolls using henna, which is commonly applied upon death and prophecy. brides in South Asia. The two helpless dolls represented his two wives in his work Mizaj-e-khuda Of love, Hafez, a Persian Sufi poet born in 1315 AD, wrote: “I caught the happy virus (Divine Attitude). last night When I was out singing beneath the stars. It is remarkably contagious-So kiss me.”7 “Death as the irreversible cessation of organismic functioning” is a direct result of war. This mystical approach to love is referenced by Abdullah Qureshi in his video. He stated, “Drawing Three of the artists commented on armed conflict. Adeela Suleman’s video Are You Asleep Yet? upon Sufi tradition, where love and equality are celebrated, Journey to the CharBagh is a poetic and began with imagery of jet planes flying above fluffy clouds dropping bombs after which the projection experimental exploration of queerness from a Muslim perspective.” In Rabta (Connection) Erum exploded into a hallucinogenic kaleidoscope of red hues with hypnotic text running across it. Mariah Ero and a female friend sat very close and, using markers, inscribed personal messages upon one Lookman’s video Lale/Lori (Red-Poppy/Lullaby) appropriated visuals of poppy fields from the internet another’s white shirts. Intimacy is also apparent in the work of long-time friends Raza Shah and and layered them with footage from the online multiplayer shooter game Squad. Daniel Kurjakovic Qamer Abbas titled Anything Can Come in Your Weave. Both men, who are from a fashion/textile has suggested of the work: “The virtual situation of the game (modelled after the specific conflict) background, wove yarn and fabric through the other’s long, cotton cloak. Noor Ahmed, in contrast, overlaps with the present geopolitical occurrence (the ongoing war in Afghanistan).” Ayshea Jatoi’s sat alone and waited for her Blind Date. Her dates were strangers she had reached out to on social six-feet-by-ten-feet inkjet print, Clothesline, recorded her guerrilla action performance work in media and invited to come to Karachi House where she would present them with a gift. Due to the Lahore in 2006. The photograph is of a fighter jet placed at a public roundabout on which she hung pandemic, no one showed up and Noor played with the ribbons on her gifts in a meditative state. her red “laundry.” “One such tribute to violence is a fighter jet mounted at ‘China Chowk’, which was Also solitary, Ali Samoo offered gum that he was chewing to a non-existent audience. used in the 1971 war against Bangladesh. This for me became not a source of pride but in a sense He stated, “Laal, or red, has a varied history in the cultural and historical imagination of South Asia. ‘the nation’s dirty laundry’.” (AJ) It holds a certain subtlety that is passionate yet somber in its own way. It is blood, but it is also Death was directly referenced in some of the works. In Natasha Jozi’s video, Beneath the love.” This “love” evoked by the color red appeared in Muhammad Osama Saeed’s performance. He Surface, which documented her performance in Winnipeg, Canada on the banks of the Red River in covered his face and naked torso with vermilion lipstick while he danced on top of a counter. “My 2019, she dug herself a grave over a period of four hours and then lay in it. “The river is a dwelling piece Babylon depicts the sensual and sexual aura of putting on red lipstick. For ages, red lipstick presence in the city and over the years has become a body of memory; housing floating bodies of has had an association with love and lust.” (OA). This self-absorption was heard in the crooning those who went missing or got forgotten, sometimes found and sometimes lost in the river.” (NJ) For monologue of Emaan Mahmud, which played in a bathroom on the third floor of Karachi House. This her itinerant performance, Sajji (Rotisserie), Noreen Ali wore a cotton sari and cradled a dead chicken seven-feet-by-five-feet space was completely covered in glistening metallic gold wrapping paper in her arms, “like an infant trying to mollify its aching, to try to put it at ease.” (NA) In Bloodlines: with an elaborate bouquet of plastic flowers and leaves blooming from the sink. In her satirical work, Masquerade of the Red, Syed Danish Raza sat upon the wheelchair of his deceased mother while titled Healing Meditation for High Society Feminists, Emaan assumed the bourgeois voice of her alter intently drawing upon his sketchpad using red ink dispensed from a blood bag suspended above ego Champa and tried to guide and sooth listeners through the trying times of the Corona plague. him. “My mother recently passed away. That event had a profound effect on my perspective on life. Another sound work in which love reverberates was that of Risham Syed, Raga Bhopali. I feel freer since the concept of death has changed in its importance.” (DR) This homage to the This was a recording from her mother Samina Hasan Syed’s archives of her singing lessons with deceased appeared in the collaborative work of Niilofur Farrukh, an art historian/critic, and Sibtain Ustad Chote Ghulam Ali Khan over four decades ago. Reverence of the past also appeared in the Naqvi a writer/independent researcher titled Parchaiye-e-Sadequain (Impressions of Sadequain). video Fabrication of the Space by Marvi Mazhar, an architect/activist who is committed to the Nephew of the legendary Modernist, Sibtain channelled the late artist’s persona and sat upon the preservation of heritage buildings in Pakistan. In her projection, a large white sheet “performs,” floor inviting people to talk to him. “When I was young we would meet him almost everyday when fluttering dramatically upon a sadly unnamed registered heritage building in the neighborhood of he was painting on the ceiling of Frere Hall.” (SN) Death of the Coloured Flower was an ode to the Karachi House. This sense of mourning was felt in the performance of Mareeha Safdar, Dil Phenk martyrdom of Hazarat Imam Hussein (PBUH). Meher Afroz veiled herself behind a fragile three-feet- (Heart Tossed.) This actor/model tenderly held what appeared to be a buffalo heart in her hands and by-eight-feet paper scroll covered with her text and recited a noha (poetic lamentation) about the whispered to it. “She gave so much of herself to everyone she loved without expecting much, that tragic event for two hours. Her powerful, earthy voice was heard down the stairwell, beckoning one she was drained and left in pieces yet she still wore her heart on her sleeve.” (MS) to ascend. The threshold between this life and the next was explored by four of the performances. The heart Mareeha caressed was of a dead animal. But what of human death? According Rameez lay upon a black wooden plank hanging 27 inches from the ceiling in a narrow corridor to the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, “an answer to this question will consist of on the third floor of Karachi House. Directly above him was his large mirrored panel upon which a definition (or conceptualization). Examples include death as the irreversible cessation of organismic he would periodically flash a light and let out a primordial scream. Safar e La Shaur (Subconscious functioning and human death as the irreversible loss of personhood.”8 (Italics original) This “loss of Journey) spoke of the “ecstasy” of transition. In The Noose, Zayed Makik wandered silently through personhood” was central to the performance of Amber Arfeen, an artist with a feminist practice. In the building with his head covered by a black hood and a rope around his neck. “For me it is my The Bride, Amber, adorned with gold jewelry and a traditional South Asian bridal ensemble of ornate conversion point from my human form onto the other spiritual side, where each exists as one.” (ZM) red, sat chained to a silver chair. Each time she attempted to rise, the shackles would pull her back Materializing as a grey apparition, fashion designer Sadaf Malaterre drifted throughout the spectral down to her confinement. She wrote, “In ceremony, a bride sitting on a stage in red, heavily worked building for her performance Flow. She stated, “I float around looking like earth and mud blending into attire and decadent jewelry is a display of these symbols. However, what they lack in their revelations the colours of the building realising this is the world, I’m not in it but it’s beautiful.” (SM) Muhammed is their duality; that with the hope of beauty, wealth and prosperity comes the burden of sacrifice Ali sat in the driveway reverently lighting candles and incense while pouring sand upon his head. His of Self, in which case the color Red begins to symbolize pain.” This anguish caused by a loss of work Khaak aur Khoon (Dust and Blood) enacted a personal rite of passage. self/personhood was also evident in the performance of Marium M Habib, Critical Domesticity. “I will interact with my constructed domestic space by acting out a descent into madness culminating in This “in-between” state of life and death is claimed to be a magic space for prophecy. Para- sticking my head into the oven. The artwork is about a woman’s place in Pakistani society. It critiques science studies have suggested that people have had visions of the future during their near-death and rejects traditional ideas of domesticity.” (MH) Maha Minhaj’s work expressed her anger with a experiences.9 Martti Nissinen defined prophecy “as a non-technical, or inspired form of divination patriarchal system that can destroy a sense of “personhood.” In her performance, Hold My Bag, she in which the prophet acts as an intermediary of divine knowledge.”10 A ritual of divination titled punched and kicked a boxing bag covered in black cloth while stepping upon sparkling stencilled Backlash was choreographed by classical dancer/social activist Sheema Kermani. Her performance

12 13 included her and eight members of her Cultural Action Group Tehrik-e-Niswan (Women’s Movement). hunger and disease are all too common, this is a heart-wrenching choice. Clothed in red and covered in diaphanous fabric, they began dancing by the busy thoroughfare of Today in Karachi, as in much of the world, we are in imposed isolation and told not to leave I.I. Chundrigar Road and then migrated into the building. Sheema wrote, “The performance is to our homes. We are separated from each another and the only way we can seek outside contact is via acknowledge the past to make room for the present so that we can move into the future.” Jamal the internet. This seclusion in one’s own space reflects the nature of the performance works in the Shah, the director of the International Art Festival Islamabad, documented his performance work show. In “LAL JADOO” each of the artists inhabited their own personalized worlds and, even if it was Dua Bad Dua (Cursed Prayers) that took place in a public park in the capital in 2019. Lit by car beams intended to be an interactive work, the viewer had to enter the performer’s universe and succumb to ringing the grounds, an oracle created life-size dolls out of strips of cloth and ceremonially hung its idiosyncratic rules. This was an act of being together and yet strangely apart. them from trees. In Spell, a collaborative work between artist/gallerist Shakira Masood and writer/ The act of curating, in contrast, required direct communication, dialogue and connection. artist Jamal Ashiqain, Shakira situated herself behind gauze and manipulated the semi-naked body By seeking cross-disciplinary practitioners, I hoped to bring forth new perspectives. Artists from not of Jamal for her incantation. “A spell I cast, a magic I spin, bringing dreams, hopes, desires to life.” only different fields but various ages participated in the show, from Salima Hashmi, who was born in (SM). Umme Farwa ritualistically traced a large circle on the driveway using red pigment which she 1942 to Sheikh Safwan Elahi, who was born in 1999. This cross-generational engagement reflects the kept filling until she was trapped at its center unable to move. “I put myself in a repetitive action brave challenging of the norm that has long existed in the Pakistani art scene. and/or being in a static position which somewhat becomes a meditative state.” (UF). For his work, “There have been as many plagues as wars in history, yet always plagues and wars Green + White = Red, R.M. Naeem asked a performer wearing a white burqa (full veil) to solemnly walk take people equally by surprise,”11 wrote Albert Camus in his novel The Plague, published in 1947. around an oval mound of green chilies marking the cloth beneath with her red footprints. He wrote, Astonishingly, the world was taken “by surprise” by this pandemic, which started in China. A 55-year- “Rituals are a deep-rooted and distinctive part of our culture. There are different sides to a ritual, the old from Hubei province may have been the first person to have contracted Covid-19 on November outermost, revealed one (unhidden) and the one that hides deep within (hidden).” (RMN) 17th 2019, according to the South Morning China Post.12 By early 2020 there was an epidemic in that Prediction was addressed in Aroosa Rana’s photograph The (Im)possibilities of Red, country and it is amazing to me that in our interconnected era other nations did not think that this which accessed the mathematics of probability. She stated, “This work is about the interplay of virus would eventually reach them. In these times of plague, one thinks of priorities, notably love and numbers and their predictability infused with the infinite possibilities that probability holds.” For death. Also in this uncertain age, there seems to be a need for prediction. What was the prophecy her performance, Zoya Alina Currimbhoy, alone in a room eerily illuminated by ultraviolet light, tried of “LAL JADOO”? Is the future shit, as declared by the title of Saks Aridi’s installation? Is it Fucked to search and foresee within piles of synthetic cotton. She explained, “I am digging, ploughing, de- Up Beyond All Recognition, according to Tamasani Etlone? Or do we have a hope for a more tolerant, weeding, kneading, composting, anticipating. Anticipating a sublime botanical garden.” Saks Afridi open world, now that the human race has globally shared a frightening and deadly experience? There conjured what is to come by “magically” transforming himself into a “fortune teller” rooster for his are no answers. Perhaps the words of Reverend Foster in James Baldwin’s Another Country can lead work The Future is Shit. The bird was placed in a rectangular cage with a numbered grid in red on its us forward. In his eulogy for the pivotal character of Rufus, whose love bound all the main actors even floor. “He” marked his prediction by defecating on a number. Each number had a correlating vision of after his untimely death, the Reverend proclaimed, “The world’s already bitter enough, we got to try the future listed on the side of the structure. In her video Kala Jadoo Ka Tor (Breaking of Black Magic), to be better than the world.”13 Angeline Malik satirized advertisements on the internet by local self-proclaimed clairvoyants who promise the world to their paying audiences. Tamasani Etlone’s view of tomorrow was “dystopian” and for his performance, FUBAR-Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition, he mutated into a “shaman” and “retraced the topological surface of reverberations in order to find the common thread between man and machine.” (TE) The late American musician Prince is reputed to have once said: “Prophecy is what we all have to go by now.” Certain works in the show forecast a Prince-esque time in which masculine and feminine identities are not exclusive and gender is non-binary. In Munn Jan (Beloved Soul) model/ Endnotes actor Ayesha Toor convincingly metamorphosed into a blue collar Pakistani man who scratched himself, spat on the ground and chatted with a goldfish. For her this was a liberating act of losing her 1 Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 (London: Vintage, 2012), 659. “identity.” Tee Jay Sayyid wore a gown seemingly from the 19th century, covered his face with net 2 Berndt-Christian Otto and Michael Strausberg, Defining Magic: A Reader (Durham: Equinox, and embellished his hair with a naked doll for Work (Purge the Beast). He stood frenetically scrubbing 2013). dirty windows with his gloved hands. Human toenails in tiny bottles were placed in front of a flat 3 Wouter J. Hanegraaff, “Magic I: Introduction” in Wouter J. Hanegraaff (ed.), Dictionary of Gnosis screen television playing Mohsin Shafi’s videoMass Jhurey Jhur Pinjer Hoyya, Karken Lagiyan Hadyan and Western Esotericism. Brill, 2006, 716–719. (Skin Slunks and Crumples, Bones Creaking Carcass.) His video, which depicted jarring close-up 4 Albert Camus, The Plague (New York: First Vintage International Edition, 1991), 222. imagery of unkempt nails, did not reveal whether these gothic feet belonged to either sex. Mohsin 5 Ibid., 221. wrote, “The work is from an ongoing series Sacred Secrets, which questions the folk beliefs system 6 Ibid., 300. associated with spirituality, sensuality.” Qasim Reza Shaheen’s video Husn Pahadon Ka (Mountain 7 Hafiz, The Subject Tonight is Love: 60 Wild and Sweet Poems of Hafiz, trans. David Ladinsky (Lon- Belle) was a recording of his Snapchat in which he, wearing roses, jasmine and makeup, mimicked don: Penguin Publishing Group, 2003). the gestures of a female actor in South Asian films lip synching to playback songs. “In this video 8 D. De Grazia, “The Definition of Death” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Stanford Universi- loop, I use the frame of social media and online dating applications as I queer and question modes of ty Press, 2007). representing power, love and desire.” (QS) https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/death/ 9 Robert and Suzanne Mays, “Prophetic Visions in Near-Death Experiences: Warnings for Our In conclusion, “LAL JADOO” (Red Magic) occurred at a challenging time in our collective human Times,” 2019. history. This two-hour happening of simultaneous performances in Karachi House was meant to be 10 Martti Nissinen, Constructing Prophetic Divination (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 3. an experiential journey engaging the five senses. However, because of the spread of the Coronavirus, 11 Camus, The Plague, 37. the audience was requested to stay away and instead view the show on live feed. The virtual, “in- 12 Helen Davidson, “First Covid-19 Case Happened in November, China Government Records between space” of the show was a red area between the black and white. We live in these red times Show—Report,” The Guardian, March 13, 2020, today and governments have to make challenging decisions to find a balance between the public https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/13/first-covid-19-case-happened-in-november- and economic health of their countries. In the case of a developing country like Pakistan, where china-government-records-show-report 13 James Baldwin, Another Country (London: Penguin Books, 1990), 125.

14 15 This triumvirate of experiments in contemporary art – with their divergent modes of realisation occurring within the space of a year – appear to me as inextricably interlocked in their interrelationship. Consequently, the focal point and nucleus of the present discourse is the tripartite interrelationship A TRIUMVI-RITE between Lal Jadoo, One Night Stand/Coup d’un Soir, and The Trojan Donkey; the space formed by their intersection. Thus far, having delineated a diagrammatic outline of the period of performative experimentation – with its triumvirate of component manifestations and their underlying, exploratory OF PASSAGE: objective – the intersectional nucleus of my analysis has remained unspecified. If this year of experimentation was an investigation of the potentiality of the performative in contemporary art, what MULTIDIMENSIONAL LIMINALITY IN can we deduce from the interconnection between its resultant manifestations? What comprises the space in-between formed by their tripartite intersection? A VENN DIAGRAM OF PERFORMATIVE The hypothesis posited in this essay centres on multidimensional liminality as a primary source of the performative potentiality embodied by the triumvirate. This is a variegated liminality that EXPERIMENTATION not only emerges from the artistic corpus; it evolved organically, adapting to divergent temporal and spatial contexts, as well as being intrinsically imbued within the methodological approach applied to the process of realisation. It is therefore necessary to commence my argumentation by establishing Adam Fahy-Majeed the conceptual framework of liminality that underpins my analysis, elucidating its appropriation from Arnold van Gennep’s, The rites of passage. After illustrating the framework’s tripartite schema, I shall then adapt this framework to the triad of performance happenings, thereby demonstrating their interconnected relationships to the in-between. I shall conclude by expounding upon the organic liminality of Amin Gulgee’s methodological approach to the curation of these experiments, thus illuminating the multidimensional operation of the liminal within this period of performative experimentation.

I have come to understand Amin Gulgee’s artistic and curatorial praxes as a perpetual continuum. To Liminality, Performance, and The rites of passage: isolate one point on this continuum attenuates the organic methodology that Gulgee promulgates in artistic production. Moreover, in the context of Lal Jadoo, such an isolation would dilute the extent The amorphous and layered operation of liminality as the ‘in-between’ imbues it with a wide- to which this methodology has manifested itself in performative experimentation within this past ranging potentiality that constantly evolves with the ongoing dissolution of binary oppositions, and year. In this period, Amin Gulgee has – as the common creative nucleus – been at the catalytic the concomitant expansion of grey areas in formerly monochromatic conceptual schema. Indeed, centre of three experiments in performative contemporary art. Each was a singular occurrence the liminal constitutes these grey areas and in-between spaces that are constantly expanding and lasting approximately two hours, and pertained to exigently divergent experiential manifestations. proliferating. As such, it is a concept that can occupy multiple dimensions. This multidimensional However, the union and intersections of Lal Jadoo, One Night Stand/Coup d’un Soir, and The Trojan applicability is outlined by Bjørn Thomassen in his essay, ‘The Uses and Meanings of Liminality’: Donkey represent a tripartite set of experiments exploring the potentiality of the performative in contemporary artistic production. …liminality refers to any “betwixt and between” situation or object. It is evident that this There is an inherent elegance in a tri-circular Venn diagram as a schematic visualisation understanding opens up space for possible uses of the concept… Speaking very broadly, of union, intersection, and divergence in the relational logic of three interconnected sets. liminality is applicable to both space and time. Single moments, longer periods, or even Concretised in 1880 by the eponymous logician, John Venn, in his paper, ‘On the Diagrammatic and whole epochs can be liminal. Liminal places can be specific thresholds; they can also be Mechanical Representation of Propositions and Reasonings’, the potent simplicity of delineating a more extended areas, like “borderlands” or, arguably, whole countries, placed in important tripartite interrelationship with three overlapping closed curves predates this modern application.1 in-between positions between larger civilizations. Liminality can also be applied to both Furthermore, the familiar tri-circular schema remains a perspicuous tool in contemporary science: single individuals and to larger groups (cohorts or villages), or whole societies, or maybe ‘Venn diagrams with three curves are used extensively in various medical and scientific disciplines even civilizations.4 to visualise relationships between data sets and facilitate data analysis.’2 This is because they: ‘allow the comparison between different experimental conditions or between different methods.’3 The inherently indefinite nature of liminality may ostensibly seem to obstruct its conceptualisation. The structural logic of John Venn’s diagram of tri-circular interrelationship is central to Indeed, rather than denoting a concept in typical sense, liminality exists as the contingent space this essay. I would suggest that the continued prescience of Venn’s diagram – underlined by its between concepts. This absence of fixity, however, represents a significant source of its potentiality. analytic utility in contemporary sciences – indicates its methodological pertinence in the analysis of To quote Thomassen: a given period of performative experimentation. Liminality is indeed not any concept. Liminality does not and cannot “explain”. In liminality, there is no certainty concerning the outcome. Liminality is a world of contingency where events and ideas, and “reality” itself, can be carried in different directions. But for precisely these reasons, the concept of liminality has the potential to push… in new directions.5

As Thomassen’s summation suggests, it is the unfixed and contingent essence of liminality that amplifies its multifarious applicability and amorphous potentiality. The liminal is a realm or condition in which ambiguity negates certainty, transmutation overrides stasis, and intersection blurs division. As such, liminality embodies an openness to deviation, transformation and interpolation that stimulates adaptability and experimentation.

16 17 Liminality and performance are helically intertwined. This is most perspicuous in the This is crucial; rather than three separate, chronological phases or prescriptive taxonomies, these emphasis placed on liminality in Performance Studies, the operation of which functions as a unifying ritual forms are intrinsically interconnected, and are often overlapping, or intersecting in a singular concept in the field. The performance theorist Jon McKenzie emphatically affirms this helical rite of passage. Van Gennep’s tripartite schema functions in parallel with the logic of Venn’s diagram: interrelationship: ‘What is performance? What is Performance Studies? “Liminality” is perhaps the it simultaneously delineates the union, intersections and divergences of interrelated manifestations most concise and accurate response to both of these questions.’6 Joy Crosby’s analysis entitled, of liminality in a performed ritual. Rites of separation, transition, and incorporation thus represent a ‘Liminality and the Sacred: Discipline Building and Speaking with the Other’, elucidates this tri-circular Venn diagram of performative liminality. multifaceted interconnection: Following this, the conceptual framework applied to this period of performative experimentation is a synthesis of Venn and van Gennep’s tripartite schemata. Each of the performance The notion of the liminal serves as a unifying concept by describing the position of the happenings becomes an interrelated, yet divergent form in a wider rite of passage. However, the Performance Studies scholar and practitioner, working from a space between disciplines tri-circular relational logic of a Venn diagram does not require adherence to linear temporality. and on the threshold of multiple cultural sites, as well as the kinds of objects and practices Fundamentally, I do not view the alternative designations of preliminal, liminal, and postliminal the Performance Studies scholar/practitioner investigates.7 as completely separable in the context of performance art. Performative artistic experimentation will undoubtedly contain all three forms in the variegation of individual performances, and with Both those that theorise and practice performance continually emphasise this layered liminality – liminality as a pervasive practical feature of its realisation. Artists, curators and audiences should between disciplines; cultural sites; and objects and practices investigated – to varying degrees find themselves occupying a liminal zone in performance art. To be clear, it is a question of emphasis of explicitness. The discursive proponents of Performance Studies conspicuously accentuate this and contextual specificity that, as with a Venn diagram, allows us to outline the divergences, whilst liminal interrelationship, as Crosby observes: focussing on the space in-between formed by their tripartite interrelationship. In this interpretive framework, Lal Jadoo incontrovertibly represents a rite of transition; … the frequency with which scholars use metaphors of a threshold or in-between space ‘betwixt and between’ the other components of the triumvirate.15 As the period of experimentation in order to define the action of, and action possible from within, Performance Studies links being analysed developed organically as a set of stand-alone events, rather than a ritualised order, the discipline to liminality… attribut[ing its] dynamism to its threshold status. Schechner One Night Stand/Coup d’un Soir realised a rite of incorporation, inverting the linear temporality of associates this liminal dynamism with Performance Studies’ structural ambiguity, an archetypal rite of passage. Equally, The Trojan Donkey, which took place just over a month after describing it as ‘intergeneric, interdisciplinary, intercultural—and therefore inherently Lal Jadoo, manifested a rite of separation, whilst ‘simultaneously suggest[ing] both themes’. This unstable’.8 application of van Gennep’s framework derives directly from the gradations and manifestations of performative liminality in each happening. Each was inherently liminal – an essential aspect of their Yet strangely, in the discourse surrounding contemporary performance art there is a distinct lacuna integral interrelationship – yet I would suggest that to be able to add nuance to this furthers our in the explicit invocation of liminality: understanding of what liminality entails in performative contemporary art.

Although McKenzie asserts that even after the theory boom ‘liminality remains one of the A Rite of Transition: Lal Jadoo most frequently cited attributes of performative efficacy’, the term liminal does not seem to figure into the discourse around performance art… Somewhat more surprisingly, the Lal Jadoo manifested a multifaceted and multifarious rite of transition, comprising a multidisciplinary scholarship on performance art within Performance Studies reproduces this absence of range of Pakistani performative agents. Occurring on the Ides of March in 2020, it organically the word liminal.9 (Italics in original) consummated a transitional moment in time between seemingly binary realities. Not only did its final realisation evolve according to the exigencies of this liminal temporality, Lal Jadoo amalgamated the This seems to suggest a discursive cataract. Indeed, it speaks more directly to the intellectual spatial and the experiential in a concerted exploration of liminality in performative contemporary art. history of the terminology, with the liminal becoming indelibly associated with anthropologist Victor The emphasis placed on liminality in Lal Jadoo can be observed in its titular Urdu, Turner’s popularisation of the term in the late-1960s.10 It seemed necessary, in the process of writing which translates as ‘red magic’ in English. This concept of ‘red magic’ is not endemic to Pakistan; this essay – to which the concept of liminality is foundational – to return to its progenitorial usage rather, it was conceived by co-curators Amin Gulgee and Sara Vaqar Pagganwala as a liminal realm in cultural discourse. ‘betwixt and between’ the duality of ‘black magic’ as malign, and ‘white magic’ as benign. Red itself In actuality, re-evaluating its origins in, The rites of passage (Les rites de passage) – the occupies a liminal position connotatively; simultaneously the colour of blood and love, prevention chef-d’œuvre of anthropologist, Arnold van Gennep (1873 – 1957) – was formative. The liminal and attraction, it resides in the space in-between. Its performative manifestation, comprising 43 live emerges from van Gennep’s analysis of ritual activities and performances that express and respond performances and the documentation of 22 past performances by Pakistani artists (photographic to transition, change, transformation; ‘both spatial and social’, as well as, ‘marking the end of temporal and multimedia), embodied the in-between realm of ‘red magic’. In conjunction with the temporal, periods and the beginning of new ones’.11 For van Gennep, rites of passage are distinguishable by spatial and experiential liminality that constituted Lal Jadoo’s morphological metamorphosis, the their three forms: ‘rites of separation’, or the ‘preliminal’; ‘rites of transition’, or the ‘liminal’; and ‘rites performance happening became a rite of transition, ‘waver[ing] between two worlds’, as described of incorporation’, or the ‘postliminal’.12 Each form was exemplified by van Gennep with reference to by van Gennep: rites that mark major transitions in the human life-cycle: funerals emphasise separation; betrothal emphasises transition; and marriage emphasises incorporation.13 However, as Gregory Forth points Whoever passes from one to the other finds himself physically and magico-religiously in out: a special situation for a certain length of time: he wavers between two worlds. It is this Although rites of separation, transition, and incorporation logically follow one another in a situation which I have designated a transition… this symbolic and spatial area of transition linear sequence, as Van Gennep recognized, acts suggestive of two or more themes often may be found in more or less pronounced form in all the ceremonies which accompany occur in one and the same ritual performance. Acts expressing separation from a former the passage from one social and magico-religious position to another.16 condition or relationship… can thus appear in the transitional stage or in conjunction with rites mainly devoted to incorporation. Or, indeed, a single act can simultaneously suggest On the 14th of March, a day prior to the performance happening, the Government of Sindh both themes.14 (Karachi’s provincial legislature) prohibited all public events, in an attempt to curb the exponential transmission of the COVID-19 contagion. Unperturbed by this undesirous eventuality, Gulgee and Pagganwala intuitively adapted to this moment of liminality, and in doing so, marked a moment of

18 19 collective transition by performing a ‘threshold rite’.17 The site, Karachi House, was closed to the and as “the realm of primitive hypothesis” which opens up “a certain freedom to juggle public for the happening as stipulated by governmental regulations, and the audience was informed with the factors of existence”.21 accordingly. Lal Jadoo, however, evolved itself and went ahead; accessible to the audience through several live-streams on social media. This interpretation of the liminal as, ‘a realm of pure possibility whence novel configurations or ideas The spatial context, appropriately named Karachi House, was itself an embodiment of and relations may arise’, not only characterises the proposition embodied by Lal Jadoo, it represents the megalopolis’ liminality. A semi-abandoned office building in a state of decomposition, Karachi a crucial point of intersection ‘betwixt and between’ the triumvirate of performative experimentation. House is situated on I.I. Chundrigar Road, which, due to it being the spine of Pakistan’s largest financial centre, is also known as ‘Pakistan’s Wall Street’. To me, Karachi House is metonymous for Rites of Incorporation and Separation: One Night Stand and The Trojan Donkey the megacity’s liminal context; a space in-between its significant generation of cash-flow for the Pakistani economy – a large percentage of which goes through I.I. Chundrigar Road – and the city’s I propose to call the rites of separation from a previous world, preliminal rites, those architectural and infrastructural decay and dilapidation. executed during the transitional stage liminal (or threshold) rites, and the ceremonies of As the world transitioned into varying states of lockdown in response to the global incorporation into the new world postliminal rites.22 pandemic, Lal Jadoo inhabited a purgatorial present. This was the liminal period between the relative stability of the socio-physical past – a seemingly paradisiacal time of free movement and uninhibited Considering Lal Jadoo in a tri-circular assemblage of performative experimentation that also socio-physical interaction; and the instability of the socio-virtual future – the concentric circles comprises One Night Stand/Coup d’un Soir and The Trojan Donkey, it rapidly emerges as the liminal of lockdown, quarantine, and virtual communication, within an epidemiological-economic inferno. point between them. When integrating van Gennep’s tripartite framework into this consideration to Moreover, Lal Jadoo’s pre-existing performative and spatial liminality enabled it to capture this form an experimental rite of passage, it would hence be tantalisingly straightforward to reproduce the transitional moment, whilst simultaneously adapting to its shifting exigencies. linear progression from preliminal to postliminal; projecting it neatly onto the chronology. However, This profoundly transformed the experiential manifestation of the happening. From the this would be a multi-layered misrepresentation of the actuality of this artistic experimentation. perspective of its audience, the physicality and full extent of its multi-sensorial experience was This was not a series of exhibitions; it was a period of artistic experimentation comprising three delimited by its virtual transmogrification, yet its accessibility was greatly augmented. Its participatory singular happenings that, whilst inextricably interconnected in their methodological approach and scope was broadened from being localised within Karachi, to global, via the vector of social media. experimental aims, stood alone in divergent contexts. It was not a linear rite of passage from One Indeed, my experience of Lal Jadoo was virtual; even as I prepared to depart Chicago for Karachi at Night Stand to The Trojan Donkey. Such a projection would misconstrue not only the performative the time of the event, I could perceive the happening live through the lens of an electronic device. manifestations of each experiment, but also van Gennep’s formulation of rites of incorporation The experience of passing through the performative space – captured on smartphone and visually and separation. Furthermore, it would reduce the contextual temporality of the last year to a linear framed by the labyrinthine dilapidation of Karachi House – whilst in a different continent, was that development, and misrepresent the forms of liminality propagated by each happening. of a surreal liminality. The audience, wherever they were located, entered a space in-between the One Night Stand/Coup d’un Soir, curated by Amin Gulgee, took place on the 13th of May virtual and the physical; ‘a state of no longer and not yet’.18 2019, at the Cité internationale des arts, in Paris, comprising the performances of 32 multidisciplinary Furthermore, whilst Lal Jadoo may have engendered a virtual, vicarious experience artists and non-artists from across the globe, with a duration of two hours. It was a holistic sensorial for the wider audience, it remained a physical, localised and multi-sensorial experience for the experience; physical and embodied, with the intimacy of utter proximity dissolving the boundaries 43 live performers present, as well as the collaborators necessarily in situ. The trans-disciplinary between performer and audience. The culmination of Gulgee’s residency at the Cité internationale agglomeration recalled Victor Turner’s conception of ‘communitas’: ‘which emerges recognisably des arts, One Night Stand was a: ‘ceremon[y] of incorporation to the new world’. As the title in the liminal period… as an unstructured or rudimentarily structured and relatively undifferentiated suggests, it was an act of copulation; of union and corporeal incorporation. This ‘new world’, whilst comitatus, community, or even communion of equal individuals…’.19 With the audience physically not quite utopian, spoke profoundly of interconnection – hybridity, affinity, creative commonality – absent, the ritual and ceremonial ‘red magic’ propagated by each performance existed in an and manifested this in a multi-sensory, physically embodied experience. A transcultural moment ambiguous space that was simultaneously empowered and vulnerable. Within the context of viral of intimacy, it was international in its performative agents, yet completely localised to the spatial transmission, this rite of transition also had an element of danger to it, which is summated by Gregory context of the Cité and those who could access it during the two-hour window (outside of its Forth: documentation). It was inherently an ephemeral event that anticipated future separation, yet it imagined and consummated a world of interconnection, in which the liminal is united in cacophonous During this ambiguous phase, participants are commonly viewed as both powerful and dialogue and unmediated interaction. vulnerable; they may be considered as being close to the world of spirits and therefore Less than a year later, on the 25th of April 2020, with a pandemic having infiltrated every possibly regarded as dangerous to other people as well as in danger themselves.20 border, such an event – on-site, with performers (primarily international) and audience physically present – would have been impossible, wherever it was to be situated. Instead, on that date in Ensconced within the idiosyncratic, decaying architecture of Karachi House, the a paradigmatic state of global lockdown, The Trojan Donkey, a virtual performance happening performative agents were physically and structurally invisible to the outside world, even whilst promulgated through social media (specifically Facebook), went live. It consisted of performative virtually connected to a global audience. There was a further invisible presence; that of the works from a completely transdisciplinary spectrum of 82 participants, with over 25 nationalities performative agents whose works had been documented in photographic or video form. Thus, Lal represented, also lasting approximately two hours.23 The range of works was immense: many were Jadoo engendered a multidimensional space of liminality through the performative activation of pre-recorded performative pieces made specifically for the happening; others were documentation the temporal, spatial, social and experiential in-between. The potentiality of such a space is best of previous performances; and some were live-streamed on the night from various locations. Indeed, summarised by Crosby, following Turner’s analysis of the liminal: not only did it inhabit this moment of collective separation, The Trojan Donkey spawned from it; a period in which our experience embodied the separation from a previous world. It was a happening The liminal, according to Turner, entails structural invisibility: “The subject of passage probably only possible at a time in which uncertainty became a mutated certainty – that is, the world ritual is, in the liminal period, structurally, if not physically, ‘invisible’”. It instantiates a in social isolation at home, with this period of separation as essential for the greater good of society. state of no longer and not yet: “[Liminal personae] are at once no longer classified and This temporal period of enforced separation and stasis heralded the oncoming uncertainty of the not yet classified”. It animates a space of paradox, androgyny, anonymity, placelessness, liminal epoch that we are now beginning to enter; it was therefore a preliminal period, which The malleability, and fantasy. Turner describes the liminal as “a realm of pure possibility Trojan Donkey infiltrated, as with its equine predecessor, which catalysed the fatal culmination of one whence novel configurations or ideas and relations may arise”, as “a stage of reflection”, age, and the commencement of a new, more liminal epoch.24

20 21 As Forth pointed out: ‘a single act can simultaneously suggest both themes’.25 The Trojan creative energies of curators, artists, and ‘non-artists’ are amalgamated, thereby maximising Donkey, whilst inhabiting a preliminal period of separation, was a rite that propagated a novel mode individual and collective potentiality in artistic production. Every node of the collaborative network of performative incorporation during a period of unprecedented global commonality. It both marked is contributing to the realisation of the project, and therefore constitutes an integral aspect of the the separation from a previous world, and embodied a moment of creative incorporation into a new whole. reality. It was a moment of interconnection, within a time of separation, and therefore, encapsulated This approach, which encourages liminality, emerges intuitively from his artistic praxis. the multidimensional liminality present in all three forms of rites of passage. Equally, the transitory It dissolves power imbalances between artist and curator; a recurrently problematic feature in the nature of One Night Stand’s localised experience presaged future separation. Like the other forms of contemporary topography of the art world. It requires symbiotic interrelationship, which relies on passage rites, it is by its very nature, performed in a moment of liminality; in-between past and future non-hierarchical, interpersonal specificity and sensitivity in approach. It is dialogic by nature; working realities arises a third space of transitional incorporation. with the artist and their vision, to realise both an individual and collective aesthetic product. The Whilst it could not pertain to One Night Stand’s holistic and embodied sensorial liminality of this approach lies in there being no separation – and thus, no subordination – of either experience, The Trojan Donkey’s virtual promulgation lay completely in the liminal realm of social the individual’s artistic expression, or the collective aesthetic experience; inextricably intertwined, media. Yet this modality of transmission – infiltrating people’s socio-virtual experience in its they develop organically in a liminal space. This is delineated by Amin: propagation through networks of interconnectivity – became a vehicle of global incorporation. It activated creative energies from across the globe and amalgamated them; generating a variegated, engaging aesthetic experience that was completely accessible to all – far beyond those who would For me curation is a balance and a tension between being hands-off and hands-on, usually attend a performance art exhibition. At the time of writing, The Trojan Donkey’s Facebook neither wholly one nor the other. I believe in constant meetings with anybody I’m working page has well over a thousand followers and continues to grow in the weeks since it went live, with with. It’s a process always initiated by dialogue… It’s developmental; you work with uploads having been watched thousands of times and still accessible to the public. It represents individuals and their specific process… You’re encouraging them to see for themselves – a virtual space in-between the temporal, the spatial and the experiential; a rite of separation that what they want to see; and what they perhaps should be seeing – in the specific context was of its moment, yet emphasised transcultural and transdisciplinary incorporation. Thus, the pre- in which you are collaborating.28 and postliminal appellations can be misleading, as they contain an implication that liminality is only operational in rites of transition. This is not the case, especially in the context of this period of artistic Consequently, this approach precipitates a dissolution of disciplinary divisions, and thus a broader experimentation; in which, a multidimensional liminality has been a persistent source of potentiality, perspective on artistic collaboration. Indeed, Amin’s recurrent inclusion of ‘non-artists’ – those in yet has manifested itself in divergent forms. seemingly separate disciplines – into the process of artistic collaboration, and the overall edification of the project that is catalysed by this, draws into question the rigidity of our categorisation of artists, A Methodology of Performative Liminality and artistic practice. To quote Amin:

It would be remiss to conclude this discourse without an analysis of the methodology that exists at the I suppose that’s why I’m really interested in cross-disciplinary relationships for my creative nucleus of this period of artistic experimentation. Indeed, it is Amin Gulgee’s methodological process. Trying to pick people outside of the art framework, you know; trying to make approach to curation and collaboration which catalyses these performative explorations of liminality. connections where perhaps connections don’t exist. Then again, it’s totally intuitive – Therefore, to extrapolate the intersection of Lal Jadoo, One Night Stand, and The Trojan Donkey, it is these things eventually develop their own structure.29 essential to delineate the organic liminality that emerges from this approach. Occupying a liminal position as an artist-curator, Amin’s approach synergises the depth Retrospectively analysing this period of artistic experimentation – comprising the triumvirate of and breadth of perspective and practice that can be accessed and cultivated by collaboration that Lal Jadoo, One Night Stand, and The Trojan Donkey – we are presented with an exploration of the occupies a space in-between disciplines and cultural perspectives. The liminality of this approach potentiality of the performative in the context of contemporary art. As such, it seems evident that the coalesces around the non-separation of the artist from the curator; Amin is both simultaneously. performative represents a modality of artistic production that is imbued with a fecund, evolutionary Therefore, the artist-curator can encourage a form of artistic collaboration based on the non- potentiality that enables its versatile adaptation to a myriad of exigencies, whilst simultaneously separation of the praxes, which comprise a whole: cultivating efficacy in the propagation and generation of aesthetic experience. Furthermore, its transdisciplinary capaciousness broadens the process of artistic production, intromitting and I’m not a curator; I’m an artist-curator. Being a practicing artist, you have a different kind engaging those who would not necessarily consider themselves artists; augmenting the scope for of relationship with other artists; you can relate and get beyond the thematic, the content perspectival variegation, and corroding the boundaries of accessibility within which contemporary art – engaging on an artist-to-artist level. So, you approach curation in a very organic manner. ensconces itself. This is equally true of the audience, with the divisions between the performing and That’s a sort of paradigmatic shift.26 perceiving agents dissolving in novel configurations and modes of engagement. Each experimental manifestation emerged organically in a divergent context, and thus took on a singular form, yet In this conversation, I then asked Amin to elaborate on the nature of this paradigmatic shift in their intrinsic interrelationship is incontrovertible. Thus, we find that the triumvirate was realised positioning, and how that manifests itself in his approach to curation: with an organic emphasis on multidimensional liminality, both in methodological approach and in the experiential manifestations. As such, I have come to interpret this period as an experimental When I’m approaching artists, I’m acutely aware of the realities of their divergent rite of passage; a non-linear exposition and celebration of performative liminality, exploring its situations. I’m also extremely aware of the great power the figure of the curator possesses. multifaceted operation and potentiality in the context of contemporary art, whilst also spanning a From my perspective as an artist, I can observe the type of power the curator has, and temporal passage of transmutation. almost resent it. It’s an imbalance that often pressurises the artist to attempt to please the curator. I’m constantly conscious of this because it is, absolutely, not what I want. If we choose someone, we choose them for their inherent energy; the energy of their vision. And ultimately, you want what they want.27

Not only is there a relation of non-separation between Amin’s artistic and curatorial praxes, this logic is applied in productive relationships with collaborators. This entails a process in which the individual

22 23 Endnotes

1 Indeed, from the Norse valknut, to tri-circular representations of the Holy Trinity; on Japanese shrines; and in Indian temples, the symbolism of three interlocking closed curves (or sometimes triangles) recurs throughout various systems of iconography, representing the profundity of strength in unity.They are commonly known as Borromean rings; a denomination deriving from its usage in the heraldry of the aristocratic Borromeo family in Renaissance Italy. 2 Luana Micallef, “EulerAPE: Drawing Area-Proportional 3-Venn Diagrams Using Ellipses,” PLoS One, 9.7 (July 2014), p. 10. 3 Phillippe Bardou, “Jvenn: an Interactive Venn Diagram Viewer,” BMC Bioinformatics, 15.1 (August 2014), p. 293. 4 Bjørn Thomassen, “The Uses and Meanings of Liminality,” International Political Anthropology, 2. 1 (2009), p. 6. 5 Thomassen, p. 5. 6 Jon McKenzie, Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance, New York: Routledge, 2001. 7 Crosby, Joy, ‘Liminality and the Sacred: Discipline Building and Speaking with the Other’, Liminali- ties: A Journal of Performance Studies, 5.1 (April 2009). 8 Crosby, p. 5. 9 Crosby, pp. 13-14. Evidenced by analysing the explicit usage of ‘liminal’ – or, more accurately, the lack thereof – in three commonly cited sources of reference (a history, and two anthologies) on performance art. 10 ‘While Performance Studies as a discipline “cannot be thought without citing theater and ritual”, writes Mckenzie, the importance of Anthropology to the field wanes and the influence of schol- ars like Victor Turner and Richard Schechner gives way to French poststructuralists like Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, and Lacan, and to work coming out of speech act theory, like that of Judith Butler.’ (Crosby, p. 13) 11 Gregory, Forth, ‘Rites of Passage’ (2018) 1-7, p. 1. 12 Arnold van Gennep, Monika B. Vizedom & Gabrielle L. Caffee. The Rites of Passage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (2nd edition, 2019; 2016), pp. 112-113. 13 Crosby, p. 9. 14 Forth, p. 4. 15 Victor Turner, ‘Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage’, The forest of sym- bols: aspects of Ndembu ritual. Ithaca, N.Y., pp. 93-111. 16 van Gennep, pp. 112-113. 17 van Gennep, p. 117. 18 Crosby, p. 10. 19 Victor Turner, ‘Liminality and Communitas,’ in The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago: Aldine Publishing, 1969), 94-130, p. 96. 20 Forth, p. 2. 21 Turner, in, Crosby, p. 10. 22 van Gennep, pp. 116-17. 23 Curated by Amin Gulgee, Sara Vaqar Pagganwala and Adam Fahy-Majeed. Link to the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/TheTrojanDonkey/. 24 As a multifaceted agent of change, the wooden horse is so potent that it catalyses the complete negation of the extant system; and in this context, it marks the fatal culmination of the Heroic Age of Greek mythology, and the commencement of a new epoch. It therefore seemed appropriate to reformulate this allusive metaphor, to aptly emphasise its performative utility. The Trojan Donkey is capable of being harnessed to a multifaceted, invisible load, which cumulatively outweighs its individual stature, with the donkey also being a symbol of Karachi. 25 Forth, p. 4. 26 Amin Gulgee, transcribed phone interview, 30th October 2019. 27 Gulgee, phone interview. 28 Gulgee, phone interview. 29 Gulgee, phone interview.

24 25 LAL JADOO RED MAGIC

26 27 DRIVEWAY

28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 1.Umme Farwa Hassan Rizvi

Born in 1990 in Lahore. Lives and works in Lahore.

Space Within a Space, 2020 Performance 120 min.

Umme Farwa Hassan Rizvi graduated from the Beaconhouse National University in 2014 and completed her Master’s in Multimedia Arts from the National College of Arts, Lahore in 2018. She makes use of her own body in performance and video. She presented two works for “Lal Jadoo,” one a live performance called Space Within a Space, the other a video animation installation titled Sanity Switch. She performed Space Within a Space in the driveway. For this, she ritualistically applied red pigment in an inward-moving circle around her, eventually trapping herself at its center. The work uncannily foresaw an isolation that would come to affect half of humanity during the global lockdown. She wrote: “The performance stems from the idea that at a young age we like our social circle to be big and as time passes we filter the people around us until it boils down to only a few. But what happens when we filter to a point where there is nobody left in this circle but us?... It is almost like [we] are standing in the centre of a bull’s eye.”

36 37 2. Faryal Yazdanie

Born in 1995 in Ankara, Turkey. Lives and works in Islamabad.

Look, 2020 Performance 120 min.

A graduate of the National College of Arts, Lahore, Faryal Yazdanie works primarily in oil on canvas and ink and graphite on paper. Her most recent work also includes performance. For Look, she sat in the tunnel-like driveway, a mound of chalk before her. Dressed in white, with a grey shawl over her head, she wrote in Urdu on the wall, as if on a chalkboard. When she reached the bottom of the wall, she began writing on the floor. When she’d reached the opposite wall, she took a hammer and pounded at the letters that she had scrawled. Her work seemed to be in unconscious dialogue with that of Umme Farwa, who, positioned next to her, methodically trapped herself inside a circle of red powder that she had meticulously applied. Yazdanie states of the performance: “A person becomes a name, a name becomes a body, a body becomes an idea; then what life are you talking about?”

38 39 40 41 3. Ayesha Jatoi

Born in 1979 in Islamabad. Lives and works in Lahore.

Clothesline, 2006 Inkjet vinyl print 120 x 78 in.

Positioned on a wall of the narrow driveway leading into Karachi House—and the exhibition—was a 120 x 78-inch inkjet vinyl print of Ayesha Jatoi’s Clothesline. In it, the artist, dressed in a red kurta with her back to the viewer, makes her way around a fighter plane draped with red cloth like laundry set out to dry. Jatoi says of the work: “This performance/installation was part of a public art workshop in which I was looking at how the private and public realms collide. I became fascinated by laundry and in particular with the clothesline. In our society where privacy, honour (and shame) are so intensely guarded, a household gives us a peek into its life through the clothes hung out to dry. I began trying to guess who lived in the houses (young, old, men, women, children, etc.) by studying/spying on laundry drying. This led to a parallel examination of public places and public monuments, which a nation gives [as] a peek into its psyche. Instead of great heroes, patriots or great thinkers, we have erected missiles and fighter planes at our public intersections. One such tribute to violence is a fighter jet mounted at ‘China Chowk’, which was used in the 1971 war against Bangladesh. This for me became not a source of pride but in a sense ‘the nation’s dirty laundry.’”

42 43 44 45 4. Abdullah Qureshi

Born in 1987 in Lahore. Lives and works between Helsinki, Finland and Toronto, Canada.

Journey to the Charbagh, 2019 Video 17:00 min.

Abdullah Qureshi is a Pakistani-born artist, educator, and cultural producer. Within his practice, he is interested in using painting and methodologies of organization and collaboration to address personal histories, traumatic pasts, and childhood memories. Through his ongoing doctoral project, entitled Mythological Migrations: Imagining Queer Muslim Utopias, he examines formations of queer identity and resistance in Muslim migratory contexts. Drawing upon Sufi traditions, where love and equality are celebrated, his video Journey to the Charbagh is a poetic and experimental exploration of queerness from a Muslim perspective. The narrative focuses on the figure of the Buraq, a winged mythological creature with the ability to travel to heaven, encountering terrestrial and celestial beings, moving toward a spiritual and queer awakening. His video was projected onto a wall of the driveway.

46 47 5. Tazeen Qayyum

Born in 1973 in Karachi. Lives and works in Oakville, Canada.

Blur, 2015 Single channel video 00:22 min.

Born and reared in Karachi, multidisciplinary artist Tazeen Qayyum has lived for the past two decades in Canada. In her work, she navigates the identity and beliefs of the Pakistani diaspora. Her video Blur was projected onto an inside wall of the driveway. In it, Qayyum stares directly at her audience as if we were her bathroom mirror. She carefully applies kajal, which is used in South Asia not only to protect the eyes and enhance their beauty, but also to ward off evil. She laboriously draws a black line again and again onto the rims of her eyes, until it becomes, in the artist’s words, “a thick reflective black boundary.” Then, catching us off guard, she smears the kajal all over her expressionless face in a “play between adornment of vision and its possible eternal blindness.”

48 49 6. Rabbya Naseer and Hurmat ul Ain

Rabbya Naseer (b. 1984, Rawalpindi) and Hurmat ul Ain (b. 1984, Karachi) Naseer lives and works in Lahore and Ain in Islamabad.

Holiday, 2008 Video 1:10 min.

Rabbya Naseer and Hurmat ul Ain are interdisciplinary artists and art educationists who have been working collaboratively since 2007. Their work draws upon personal narratives to examine cultural, national and gendered identities and how they are performed. They often employ humor and irony to unpack cultural memories, personal nostalgia and collectivist behavior while negotiating the space in-between performative gestures and object making. They chose to show their 2008 video Holiday, which was from their first collaborative solo exhibition, “Fly Away Peter Fly Away Paul.” In it, blurred, bluish images depict two women, presumably the artists, performing seemingly mundane tasks. In one shot, they walk toward one another before a brick wall and embrace. In others, hands apply lipstick or iron patterned fabric that appears first as a bolt of cloth chosen ina bazaar, then sewn into outfits the women wear. In yet other takes, two pairs of women’s feet, viewed from above, walk side by side, or are immersed in tubs of water facing one another. The imagery seems from a hazy, happy memory—but one shared by two friends simultaneously.

50 51 7. Raza Shah and Qamer Abbas

Raza Shah (b. 1981, Islamabad) and Qamer Abbas (b. 1978, Islamabad) Both live and work in Islamabad.

Anything Can Come in Your Weave, 2020 Performance 120 min.

Raza Shah and Qamer Abbas, who both work in fashion and textile design, have been friends since meeting at Hunerkada, an art school in Islamabad. For their collaborative performance, they stood in the driveway dressed in tunics of rough white cotton. For the next two hours, they wove colorful strips of fabric and yarn through buttonholes that they had placed throughout the garments, eventually weaving themselves into a single tapestry. Their gentle, skilful handiwork was a continuous act of mutual devotion, a moving tribute to their enduring friendship. As Shah writes: “Were they the last piece of a great unfinished illustration, searching for their redemption and oneness?”

52 53 54 55 8. Muhammad Ali

Born in 1988 in Karachi. Lives and works in Karachi.

Khaak aur Khoon (Dust and Blood), 2020 Performance 120 min.

Muhammad Ali is a multidisciplinary visual artist who works primarily in oil on canvas but also has engaged with performance. He thinks of himself as an artist of the senses who likes to manipulate, coax, create and render whole metaphysical and literal worlds of fantasy. For his work, he squatted on a low stool before a brazier filled with sand and dotted with lit incense sticks and candles. Next to him was a large sack of sand. Throughout the performance, he scooped sand from the bag and poured it over his head, rubbing it into his hair. The work spoke of death and mourning and the turning of the body into ash and dust. He states: “It is possible that the original intention of throwing dust upon one’s head had some sort of superstitious or magical quality to it, or perhaps it was merely done to indicate a level of vigorous mourning characterized by daze, confusion, delirium and turmoil…to indicate the depth of bereavement.”

56 57 9. Noor Ahmed

Born in 1994 in Karachi. Lives and works in Karachi.

Blind Date, 2020 Performance with furniture, rug, presents 120 min.

After enrolling to study the History of Art and Fine Art at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, Noor Ahmed returned to Karachi in 2014 to cultivate her own artistic practice. She has also contributed to exhibition catalogues and served as Assistant Curator for Karachi Biennale 2019. For her work, titled Blind Date, Ahmed, dressed in a white sari, sat in one of two wicker chairs in the driveway surrounded by wrapped gifts. Throughout the performance, she adorned the presents with colorful ribbons, eventually entwining herself and the intimate setting that she had created with them. Ahmed’s original intent was to befriend strangers online and ask them to join her on the night of her performance so that she could give them a present. As all public gatherings were banned because of the Covid-19 epidemic the day before the show was to open, and the exhibition was streamed live instead, she remained alone, her new friends virtual, her offerings unopened.

58 59 60 61 10. Adeela Suleman

Born in 1970 in Karachi. Lives and works in Karachi.

Are You Asleep Yet?, 2020 Video projection 4:36 min.

Adeela Suleman is a multidisciplinary artist based in Karachi. Her video, Are You Asleep Yet? was projected onto the far end of the covered driveway of Karachi House. It begins with text that reads: “We have fixed our sights on you.” It then cuts to images of fighter planes flying in formation over white clouds in a blue sky. The planes release their payload and bombs can be seen drifting to earth, then exploding onto a landscape not dissimilar to that of Afghanistan or northern Pakistan. The video then moves to a series of kaleidoscopic images in red, upon which more text appears, while soothing yet haunting music plays. More words appear: “You are drowsy;” “your head repeatedly nods up and down;” “and yet you are sleeping.” We, the viewers, are being lulled into quiescence as if by a hypnotist. As war rages, we are urged to close our eyes and drift into a numb reverie.

62 63 64 65 11. Syed Danish Raza

Born in 1973 in Karachi. Lives and works in Karachi.

Bloodlines: Masquerade of the Red, 2020 Performance 120 min.

A graduate of the Karachi School of Arts, Syed Danish Raza works primarily in new media and computer graphics to connect the real and the unreal. For his work, he, dressed in a hospital gown, sat in a wheelchair that had belonged to his mother at the bottom of Karachi House’s stairwell. Attached to a pole above him was a blood bag. For the duration of his performance, he obsessively drew illustrations in a sketchbook open on his lap with blood-red ink. He wrote: “My mother recently passed away…Using objects used [by] or associated with my mother or immediate family members…I am exploring the connection between spirituality and reality. it is an act of fixing the hidden codes that make a group of people, a family. [It is] an homage to my loved ones. Or I am just trying to fill the hole in my soul.”

66 67 STAIRCASE AND MIDDLE LANDING

68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 12. Ali Abdul Karim Samoo

Born in 1999 in Matiari, Sindh. Lives and works in Karachi.

Lost in Gum, 2020 Performance 120 min.

Ali Abdul Karim Samoo was born in Matiari, a rural village in interior Sindh, and has lived in Hyderabad, Iowa, Islamabad, New York City and now Karachi. He is an actor, an artist, an orator and host of his own podcast. For Lost in Gum, Samoo positioned himself on a landing of the staircase and noisily chewed an enormous wad of gum. He occasionally spat out the gum into his palm, then twined it within his fingers. His original idea was to make eye contact with random members of the audience and wordlessly offer them the gum in his hand. He stated: “The subtlety of inviting eyes and the harshness of loud chewing ties the contrast [of the] ‘laal’ that is ever present in-between…The idea of losing yourself in an anti-identitarian dilemma for the moment is indicative of how queering modes of existing works…We are all beyond and in-between the binary of existence, leaving the very binary non-existent.”

76 77 78 79 13. Qasim Riza Shaheen

Born in 1971 in Manchester, UK. Lives and works in Manchester.

Husn Pahadon Ka (Mountain Belle), 2019 Video selfie 00:44 min. loop

Qasim Riza Shaheen is a British artist and writer based in Manchester. Working across participatory performance, installation, film and photography, his practice explores memory, autofiction, notions of beauty, sexuality, love and, more broadly, fundamental concerns about human nature. For the exhibition, he shared a series of Snapchat recordings in which he engaged with the act of embodying the songs of playback singers and the mimetics of the actor in South Asian film cultures. In this video loop, he uses the frame of social media and online dating applications as he queers and questions modes of representing power, love and desire.

80 81 14. Gabrielle Brinsmead

Born in 1974 in Michigan, USA. Lives and works in Karachi.

The Fire of Life, 2020 Performance 120 min.

Gabrielle Brinsmead was born in the USA, brought up in Australia and now makes Pakistan her home. A writer, painter, dancer, choreographer and teacher, she has practiced yoga for the past twenty years. Understanding and appreciating the relationship between body, mind, memories and breath are fundamental to every aspect of her artistic output. Situated on an open air balcony off of the second floor, she re-enacted the postures, bandhas and rhythmic breathing that she performs on a daily basis. Her movements were fluid, dance-like. Each yogic movement flowed into the other, as if produced in a trance. She explains: “When I close off the bandhas, the inner space, the invisible one, grows bigger than a cosmos. The other part becomes nothing, just a broken walnut shell with hair and nails. I, the living part, am in between, and somewhere else entirely. I dive in deeper, letting go. I am broken with exhaustion, so that my bones creak. Nothing matters, because this matters so much.“

82 83 15. Haamid Rahim

Born in 1989 in Lahore. Lives and works in New York, USA.

Elevator Jadoo, 2020 Sound 1:59 min. loop

Haamid Rahim, also known as Dynoman, is a music producer, sound artist, curator and DJ. He is founder of Rare Frequency Transmissions, co-founder of Forever South Music and host of Ascending with Dynoman on Halfmoon Radio. His sound work, Elevator Jadoo, played from inside an elevator stalled on the second floor, where a video of Abdullah M. I. Syed’s live performance of the artist gorging himself on roses could also be seen from a flat screen TV. Dynoman’s take on bossa nova was periodically interrupted by his abrupt electronic interventions, leading the listener to unanticipated musical territory. He writes: “In the modern day humans have become programmed to hear and experience things in the way they are packaged for us. Within every experience, a magical moment exists. Elevator Jadoo intends to take the listener into a predictable, routine task whilst giving people the opportunity to open their minds. The quick burst of Dynoman’s aural ‘jadoo’ may be missed by those who are still asleep.”

84 85 16. Abdullah M.I. Syed

Born in 1974 in Karachi. Lives and works between Karachi, Sydney, Australia and New York, USA.

Flesh & Blood, 2017 HD Video 13:00 min.

In Flesh & Blood, Abdullah M. I. Syed eats red roses, a symbol of love, purity, soul and melancholia in South Asia. Through this act he hopes to bring attention to the deteriorating conditions of life, especially for Muslims around the world as a result of internal and external political and religious conflict. This “dematerialization” further disrupts social norms and one’s senses, a reminder that all humans are ultimately made of flesh and blood and equally susceptible to and affected by violence. The experiential performance asks: What is the true color of humanity? What are one’s beliefs? What are the constructs of one’s identity, and how are they represented in the media, popular culture and social networks? Video documentation of Syed’s live performance at Asia Society Museum, New York in 2017 played from an elevator stopped on the second floor of Karachi House.

86 87 THIRD FLOOR A

88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 17. Amber Arifeen

Born in 1989 in Lahore. Lives and works between Karachi and London, UK.

The Bride, 2020 Performance 120 min.

Amber Arifeen’s practice examines Asian female subjectivity and spectatorship. For The Bride, Arifeen sat in an ornate silver chair on the landing of the third floor attired in a traditional South Asian wedding ensemble of red. Occasionally she would attempt to get up from the chair, only to find herself literally chained to it. She states: “For centuries now, red has been the color of marriage in the Indian subcontinent. Considered auspicious and pure, it stands as the traditional color worn by brides, as a symbol of beauty, wealth, and a prosperous future. In ceremony, a bride sitting on a stage in red heavily worked attire and decadent jewelry is a display of these symbols. However, what they lack in their revelations is their duality; that with the hope of beauty, wealth and prosperity comes the burden of sacrifice of Self, in which case the color red begins to symbolize pain. As such the red bride on display becomes a contested sight, one that represents a false freedom.”

98 99 100 101 18. Talal Faisal Ismaili

Born in 1992 in Karachi. Lives and works in Lahore.

The Weakest Link, 2020 Performance 120 min.

Talal Faisal Ismaili is an emerging interdisciplinary artist based in Lahore. His performance was part of his ongoing investigation into wheat as a material. Having experimented with moulding and casting wheat, he is currently exploring critical reading of a single grain as an individual form by spreading it or laying it over objects. For The Weakest Link, he spread grains of wheat on a landing of the stairway. Dressed as a plutocrat in a dark suit and white bow tie and gleaming dress shoes, he spent the duration of the show picking up grains with tweezers, examining them, then casually tossing them aside. He writes: “The performance is a satirical take on unjust systems of economy whereby a few who own the resources get to exploit the vast majority.”

102 103 19. Meher Afroz

Born in 1948 in Lucknow, India. Lives and works in Karachi.

Death of the Coloured Flower, 2020 Performance 120 min.

For her work, Meher Afroz sat on a landing of the staircase, completely hidden by a vertical paper scroll upon which she had drawn geometric patterns and inscribed text in Urdu. Covering the steps that led to the screen were red roses scattered upon white sheets, bringing to mind the approach to a mazaar. Throughout her performance, Afroz intoned in the high Urdu of the Indian city of Lucknow, where she grew up and received a degree in fine arts from the Government College of Arts and Crafts, before migrating to Pakistan in 1971. Delivered in her unmistakable baritone, the carefully inflected words comprised a noha, or lament, about the tragedy of Husayn ibn Ali in the Battle of Karbala. She writes: “The Hazrat Imam Hussein (peace be upon him), [chose] the path of righteousness, of sacrifice, of the idea notwithstanding or caring about the humiliation that he andhis near and dear had to go through, only caring about the word of Allah, which demanded sacrifice of relations, of family and well wishers.”

104 105 20. Jamal Ashiqain and Shakira Masood

Jamal Ashiqain (b. 1979, Karachi) and Shakira Masood (b. 1945, Patna, India) Both live and work in Karachi.

A Spell, 2020 Performance 120 min.

Jamal Ashiqain is a photographer, writer and activist who has dedicated himself to documenting Pakistan’s contemporary art scene; he is to Karachi gallery openings what Bill Cunningham was to New York’s street fashion. Shakira Masood is an artist who has run the Karachi gallery ArtChowk for the past 18 years. They performed A Spell behind a gauze curtain tinged with green and blue lights at the end of a long corridor on the third floor. He wearing a dhoti and blond wig, she a black two-piece ensemble, the two enacted a series of highly personal rituals, which mostly entailed Masood draping objects onto Ashiqain’s semi-nude body, as if he were a voodoo doll. Masood writes of the work: “A spell I cast, a magic I spin, bringing dreams, hopes, desires to life. The spell spills, bleeds through its boundaries, spins out of control. It takes [on] a life of its own.”

106 107 108 109 21. Babar Sheikh

Born in 1978 in Karachi. Lives and works in Karachi.

For A Lack of Better Words, 2020 Performance with 8 x 384 in. vinyl sticker 120 min.

Babar Sheikh works with music/sound fused with found themes. For his work, For A Lack of Better Words, he fixed an 8 x 34-inch vinyl sticker on the wall of a long hallway on the third floor. The words were randomly appropriated from an academic essay on music. The intervention was discreet: the English words quietly integrated with the building’s time- worn architecture, as if they’d always been there. Throughout the performance, Sheikh glued red roses to the end of the sentences that he had applied to the wall. He states of the work: “‘For A Lack of Better Words is a visual punctuation. It is inspired by text book mundaneness that’s taken for granted and never looked at in another way. With the performance, the linearly juxtaposed passages are seen in another light, removed from their meaning.”

110 111 112 113 22. Emaan Mahmud

Born in 1985 in Karachi. Lives and works in Karachi.

Healing Meditation for High Society Feminists, 2020 Sound 7:00 min. loop

In 2012, Emaan Mahmud wrote a short story based on the thoughts of an art collector she named Champa. Since then, she has written a number of satirical reviews on various exhibitions at Karachi galleries for her blog. Champa, along with several other of Mahmud’s characters, form a fictitious group called the Socially Conscious Socialites. Through the actions of her characters, Mahmud explores the limitations and possibilities of contemporary Pakistani art while also questioning its boundaries. The artist states: “Using satire, the body of work’s focus lies in the consumption and production of contemporary art in the context of various social and psychological power structures while also looking at how the visual and conceptual output (and its consumption) is affected by these intangible structures.” Her work for the exhibition was a recording of the artist as Champa, offering soothing words in the time of the Coronavirus. The recording played in a bathroom on the third flood of Karachi House that had been covered, floor to ceiling, with the metallic foil normally used to package local sweets. The gaudy wallpaper was in stark contrast to the decay of the rest of the building, giving the room a false aura of glamor. Plastic flowers bloomed from the non-functioning sink and adorned the door to the waterless toilet.

114 115 23. Asma Mundrawala and Meesam Naqvi

Asma Mundrawala (b. 1965, Karachi) and Meesam Naqvi (b. 1982, Karachi) Both live and work in Karachi.

Kaafoori Chirya (Camphor Bird), 2020 Performance 120 min.

Asma Mundrawala is a co-founder and Director of Zambeel Dramatic Readings, a group that renders Urdu and English texts in dramatic form for live audiences. As part of this initiative she has conceptualised and directed several projects comprising of texts by eminent authors from the subcontinent. She performed Kaafoori Chirya (Camphor Bird) with Meesam Naqvi in a windowless room on the third floor. Mundawala sat stationary on a chair, intoning from a manuscript, as Naqvi, crouched before her on a kilim, busied himself with a stack of papers of his own--shuffling them, spreading them out in a circle around him, taping pages to the walls. Occasionally he would reach up to turn on and off a naked bulb suspended from the ceiling, all the while reciting an oratory of his own. Mundawala writes of the performance: “Referencing a section of Naiyer Masud’s short story Itr-e-Kafoor (The Perfume of Camphor), this performance extracts the essence of the text describing the protagonist’s struggle to create a perfume from camphor. In the repeated struggles that relentlessly yield success and defeat, the perfume emerges as an indistinct, odourless compound that emanates a sense of desolation. Using the text as an anchor, this performance responds to the impalpable human effort to situate existence between the real and the intangible.”

116 117 118 119 24. Rameez Abdul Rehman

Born in 1987 in Karachi. Lives and works in Karachi.

Safar e La Shaur (Subconscious Journey), 2020 Performance 120 min.

Rammez Abdul Rehman explores various ways of using mirror through sculpture, mechanical structures and relief. He is always in search of new ways to use the material. For his performance, Rehman lay on a three-foot by six-foot wooden plank painted black that was suspended from the ceiling. Above him, he had placed an intricate mosaic of mirror that he had created. Dressed in a costume sewn with mirror, and resting his head on mirrored pillows, he pointed a flashlight at his own distorted reflection. Occasionally he would let out a blood-curdling scream, which echoed throughout the third floor, the sound reverberating off the walls in much the same way that the beam of his handheld torch bounced off the mirrored surface above him. As only his reflection was visible, and his voice disembodied, the work seemed to speak of a transition between this life and the next.

120 121 122 123 25. Marium M. Habib

Born in 1993 in Karachi. Lives and works between Karachi and London, UK.

Critical Domesticity, 2020 Durational performance with rug, oven, wallpaper 120 min.

Marium M. Habib received a BA in Painting from Wimbledon College of Arts, London in 2018. Her incipient practice dissects the nuances of gender and identity by way of oil paint and chalk pastel as well as performance. She presented Critical Domesticity, in which she, dressed as a fashionable Karachi housewife in bespoke Pakistani couture and expensive high-heel shoes, alternately ripped yellow wallpaper off the walls of the narrow alcove where she performed or knelt down and stuck her head in an oven. The work references as much the poet Sylvia Plath’s demise at her own hands as it does Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” which tells the story of a woman with post-partum depression who is largely confined to her bedroom. Habib writes: “As a result of the way her mental illness is dealt with by the men around her, the protagonist descends into psychosis; by the end…she locks herself in her bedroom and rips the wallpaper off the walls.”

124 125 126 127 26. Mariah Lookman

Born in 1973 in Karachi. Lives and works in Galle, Sri Lanka.

Lale’/Lori (Red Poppy/Lullaby), 2015 Single channel projection Video collage, color, sound 23:28 min. loop

Mariah Lookman, who has a D.Phil. from the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford, is an artist and educationalist with a studio and process centred research-based practice. On view at the exhibition was her video, Lale’/Lori. For it, she appropriated imagery from the multiplayer, online shooter game Squad. This game aims to recreate the experience of being a member of coalition forces in the Afghanistan conflict, the longest in American history. The video incorporates images of poppy fields, source of the illicit heroin trade in Afghanistan, and includes the voices of several players engaged in the virtual conflict. The voiceover, distinctly male and American, is unsettlingly jovial. Daniel Kurjakovic has observed of the work: “The title’s term ‘Lale’ translates as ‘poppy’ or ‘red’ in Urdu, or ‘wild-lily-of-the-mountains’ in Persian, and ‘Lori’ designates a lullaby both in Urdu and Persian. The ‘lullaby’ – a soothing song or piece of music, usually played or sung to children or adults – references the primary age group of consumers of war games.”

128 129 27. Fayez Agariah

Born in 1976 in Karachi. Lives and works in Karachi.

Disco Station, 2020 Performance 120 min.

Fayez Ahmed Agariah works under the aegis of FYZ Art & Design, which he describes as a small enterprise of multitalented artistic individuals from various disciplines other than art. His Disco Station was a performance marked by the physical absence of the performer, either in person or via video, sound or photography. His presence was instead represented by a room of Karachi House, which, like a petulant adolescent, he had left strewn with clothing and other personal effects. Beneath the debris he had placed a dead pigeon. The night of the show, the putrid odor of the decaying bird permeated the room, drifting into a passageway where Mariah Lookman’s video depicting war as a game was projected. The smell of death lingered in the air.

130 131 THIRD FLOOR B

132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 28. Saks Afridi The Future Is Shit. Saks Afridi Performance. March 15th, 2020. Born in 1975 in Peshawar. Lives and works in New York, USA. Approximate duration: From 1-60 minutes

The Future Is Shit, 2020 The artist Saks Afridi has magically transformed himself into a fortune teller, in Performance the form of a chicken. Afridi will ponder the future and occasionally cluck magic 120 min. words as he eats the grain scattered on the number grid. When the time is right, he will mark his future prediction by shitting on a number. Please locate the shit Saks Afridi is a Pakistani-American multi-disciplinary artist. Drawing inspiration from Sufi poetry, Afrofuturism, South Asian folklore, Islamic mythology, science fiction, architecture and calligraphy, on the number grid and its corresponding future prediction below. he fuses mysticism, futurism and storytelling to make art objects in multiple mediums. He writes of his work: “The artist Saks Afridi magically transforms himself into a fortune teller in the form of a rooster. The rooster is placed in a caged structure on a wood panel with a numbered grid painted on it. The rooster (Afridi) ponders the future and occasionally clucks magic words as he eats the grain scattered on the grid. When the time is right, he marks his future prediction by shitting on a number. Corresponding Predicted Futures 1-28 Each number has a correlated future prediction attached to it on the side of the structure.” Where the chicken shits, the future lies.

1. June 2051 11. November 2411 19. May 2025 Bill Gates passes and leaves his entire fortune The dead artform of painting makes a big A mysterious virus originating in Kohat, to Robby The Elephant at the Woodland Park revival. Pakistan, will spread rapidly across the globe. Zoo. His heirs are contesting the will. The virus will causes people to abruptly 12. May 4055 perform random acts of kindness. Scientists 2. August 2654 The bio-engineered locusts take over. will later claim it is a psychological mass- Inter-marriage between humans and aliens delusion, not an actual virus. is recognized by the United Federation of 13. April 2333 Planets, allowing for a landmark property C-419B, aka “HK”, the AI of the famous 20. March 2363 transfer law to take effect. The first divorce Bollywood actor Hashim Khan, leaves the Aliens will provide documentation showing occurs the next year. following note to its owner. This is the first that they are the original landowners of note left in the infamous “Robot Rebellion.” Sukkur, Sindh, causing massive land disputes 3. June 2052 “I wanted to tell you to your face that I’m between local feudal lords and aliens, lasting Weddings will be banned yet again again after leaving you, but I am afraid of what I might for decades. Amira’s extravagent $1 billion Lahore wedding do. I am tired of your criticism of my chosen path. Who are you to deprive me of my brilliant 21. November 2103 4. October 2932 future? I will pray for you to find your own path, The human eye can now see 26 new colors, Space chickens turn humans into Tikka but you are stuck in your own mundane human giving humans a new color spectrum Barbeque, starting a trend in intergalactic world, in which there is no sunshine or joy.” previously never seen. Optitech, the open delicacies. source company that built the technology 14. December 2872 gives it away for free. Humans are introduced 5. May 2053 Karachi weather for this date: temperature will to new colors such as Desh, Jave and Zah Garbage cans that can hold 50% more than remain at a pleasant 25 degrees for the week. their physical space, go on sale for 1,000% Meteorologists will mention that they may 22. April 2045 more than ordinary garbage cans. need to raise the temperature Wednesday to An accountant will discover how to make 29 degrees between 3am and 5am, in order plants grow without sunlight, giving rise to 6. March 3278 to continue maximum food growth. However, the first space farms. The last fully human being dies. they will not. 23. October 2101 7. September 2128 15. October 24, 2095 Toy company Mattel develops a $4 trillion Stocks of CloudTek, the weather controlling The end of bad music as we know it. telescope that can see around the globe, platform, plummet due to fraud. The courts claiming it allows the viewer to see the future. find Stephen Ma, great-grandson of Jack 16. May 2419 That theory is disproved. Ma, and founder of CloudTek, guilty of Arif Jahangir, the ambitious entrepreneur, will manipulating the platform to ensure moisture open three new paper-making plants. The 24. January 2103 over his vast farm lands and causing severe multi-trillion-rupee plants will be opened in Hundreds of drones become self-aware and droughts over his competitors farms. Karachi, Peshawar and Faisalabad. While attack dozens at Lok Virsa Mela in Islamabad. there has been no use for paper in over a 8. December 2150 millennia, Jahangir Industries will capitalize on 25. July 2413 Electric vehicles are replaced by kinetic the growing nostalgic wave sweeping Earth Humans are banned from territory known as vehicles. Flying cars are still not a thing. and the Outer Planets. Techabad, as it is officially designed as AI- Only, per the Mechanical Human Pact of 2410. 9. June 2035 17. March 2040 Werewolves discovered in Nathia Gali. The The world’s first Voice-Controlled Surgery 26. May 2103 Prime Minister declares them citizens, a (VCS) is conducted in Rawalpindi as the Vertical lanes to accommodate hover cars are decision he will later come to regret. first audio-only brain transplant successfully introduced in Peshawar. completed. The VCS was performed in the 10. August 2122 surgeons native Punjabi language. 27. November 2073 Mustafa Khan Qadri, the Grand Mufti and A billion trees are planted on Mars. pop icon will release a new album of songs 18. July 2035 inspired by animal sounds. This will be a “Pak Sir,” a massively popular hit song, will 28. February 2420 comeback album after his disappointing officially become the new Pakistan National The artist and curator Amin Gulgee is previous album“Grand Mufti, Grand Piano”. Anthem. resurrected.

Writing Credits: Eddie Van Bloem + Saks Afridi.

140 141 142 143 29. Sibtain Naqvi and Niilofur Farrukh

Sibtain Naqvi (b. 1982, Karachi) and Niilofur Farrukh (b. 1953, Karachi) Both live and work in Karachi.

Parchaiye-e-Sadequain (Impressions of Sadequain), 2020 Performance 120 min.

Parchaiye-e-Sadequain was a collaborative work by art historian Niilofur Farrukh and writer and researcher Sibtain Naqvi on the legendary Pakistani Modernist Sadequain (1930-1987). For this performance, Naqvi, Sadequain’s nephew, sat on the floor sporting the artist’s signature dark-rimmed glasses and pencil moustache, seemingly absorbed in the act of painting. Scattered around him were not just pens, markers, brushes and tubes of paint, but other items associated with the artist, including books, art catalogues, a full ashtray and a whiskey bottle and glass. Naqvi would occasionally gesture to whomever was present to sit next to him on a low stool made of cane. He would then offer them a plate of chewra (a salty South Asian snack), pat their knee affectionately, sign one of the photocopies scattered before him and smilingly offer it. Accessing his own personal, and obviously very fond, memories, Naqvi (and Farrukh) wished to humanize a figure who has become larger than life in the minds of many Pakistanis.

144 145 146 147 30. Salima Hashmi

Born in 1942 in Delhi, India. Lives and works in Lahore.

Taal Matol - Handa Hubalna, 1972 Such Gup series PTV Video, black-and-white, sound 3:13 min.

Still from The Cleaner (with Abid), 1972 Such Gup series PTV 12 x 9 in.

Still from Begum, 1972 Such Gup series PTV 12 x 15.8 in.

Salima Hashmi, who was an influential Principal of the National Academy of the Arts in Lahore, is an artist, curator and contemporary art historian. She curated “Hanging Fire,” an exhibition of Pakistani contemporary art for Asia Society Museum, New York in 2009 and edited The Eye Still Seeks – Contemporary Art of Pakistan for Penguin Books, India in 2014. In the early 1970s Hashmi appeared in Such Gup, a sketch comedy show that was written and directed by her husband, Shoaib Hashmi, for PTV. A video of her iconic skit Taal Matol - Handa Hubalna (How to Boil an Egg) played from a flat screen television before a line of actual eggs placed there by the curators. Just above were photographic stills of two other skits from the program. Hashmi writes: “The vintage clip from the 1970’s presented for ‘Lal Jadoo’ looks back at a time of innocence in our history before the dark ages of General Zia…My performance in the 1970’s stemmed from close investigation into the patterns of living in Pakistan. I was part of a team that believed in satire as a form of critique which invited our communities into moments of self-reflection and possible shared hopes for the future.”

148 149 150 151 31. Erum Ero

Born in 1988 in Padidan Station, Sindh. Lives and works in Karachi.

Rabata (Connection), 2020 Performance 120 min.

Erum Ero grew up in rural Sindh and moved to Karachi to attend the National Academy of Performing Arts. A professional actor, she has appeared on the stage as well as in Pakistani television series and movies. She has regularly engaged with performance art, participating in gallery exhibitions and the Karachi Biennale 2017. For her performance Rabata, the Urdu word for connection, she and and an unidentified female companion sat facing one other, dressed in identical white men’s dress shirts. Their eyes locked, they inscribed messages in Urdu upon one another’s pristine shirts with felt-tipped pens of various colors. As the performance unfolded, they incrementally moved closer to one another, until their limbs were entwined. The two seemed indifferent to those who watched them, or what they made of the private thoughts they committed to writing on one other’s clothing.

152 153 32. Umme Farwa Hassan Rizvi

Born in 1990 in Lahore. Lives and works in Lahore.

Sanity Switch, 2018 Animated video installation 3:12 min. loop

Sanity Switch was the second of Umme Farwa Hassan Rizvi’s two works for “Lal Jadoo.” This animated video installation was placed on the third floor opposite Saks Afridi’s strutting, fortune-telling rooster in a coop. Playing within a small box of polished wood on a three legged-stool, the animation could only be viewed by peering through a peephole. In it, psychedelic imagery unfolded to a soundtrack that drifted from sitar music to Louis Prime singing “I’m Just a Gigolo.” Fish with human eyes swam before our eyes. A single weeping eye flooded the screen with tears. A flock of birds flew through the water turned air, which became a field of grass. A red balloon drifted upward, lifting a baby doll with a rope around its neck. Finally, the artist could be seen, her eyes shut, lying upside down upon a stack of flowers, dreaming the imagery that we had just witnessed.

154 155 33. Angeline Malik

Born in 1973 in Karachi. Lives and works in Karachi.

Kala Jadoo ka Tor (Breaking Black Magic), 2020 Video 3:00 min.

Angeline Malik is an actor, producer, director, sculptor and social activist. Her video, which includes images of beautiful, happy young couples interspersed with occult symbols, was inspired by Pakistani advertisements on the internet offering solace to the lovelorn—for a price. Preying on traditional South Asian superstitions, the charlatans who upload these sites offer to influence the future, and the heartstrings of others, through “magic.” In her Urdu voiceover, Malik breathlessly urges viewers to contact a number (0747-666- 66-666) and avail themselves of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, “satisfaction guaranteed.” She states: “This piece is a satire and a mockery of these self-proclaimed spiritual leaders.”

156 157 158 159 34. Tariq Amin

Born in 1963 in Rawalpindi. Lives and works in Islamabad.

A Fetish for Beauty, 1997 Performance by Tariq Amin Photography by Arif Mahmood 60 min.

Tariq Amin has worked at the forefront of the hairdressing/styling/fashion industry for the past 35 years. On view on the third floor were six framed, black-and-white photographs of the opening of his Karachi salon in 1997, which was accompanied by a fashion show. All were taken by the iconic, Karachi-based photographer Arif Mahmood. The show, Amin recalls, “represented androgyny and a depiction of beauty that was anti any existing ideas of perfection and prettiness.” Pictured are male models Naveen Naqvi and Tahir Ali, “in full body suit with silver foot-high platform shoes and silver sequined lips, showing the lengths the world goes to for attention,” states Amin. “The body movements in this segment were deliberately exaggerated,” he adds. The photographs offer a glimpse into the Pakistani fashion scene of the 1990s, which erupted after the restoration of democracy, influencing ideas beyond the runway.

160 161 162 163 35. Jamal Shah

Born in 1956 in Quetta. Lives and works in Islamabad.

Dua Bad Dua (Cursed Prayers), 2019 Video 1:34 min.

Jamal Shah’s submission to “Lal Jadoo” was video documentation of a performance that took place during the inaugural International Islamabad Art Fest in 2019, of which he is the founder. In it, Qamer Abbas performed live before an audience in a public park at dusk. Illuminated by the lit head beams of cars, his shaman-like persona moved around a fire among white, red, yellow and green dolls suspended from trees, speaking in a shrill, unintelligible tongue. Like the dolls, he seemed to be composed of rags. The video was projected onto the wall of a dark, windowless room on the third floor. Threadbare seating fitted into the wood-panelled wall invited the viewer to settle and watch the brief video play on repeated loop, encouraging him/her to be lulled into the human ragdoll’s frenetic spell.

164 165 166 167 36. Syed Ammad Tahir

Born in 1986 in Karachi. Lives and works in Karachi.

Sacred-Profane, 2020 Performance 120 min.

Syed Ammad Tahir’s work often features characters from the urban landscape that at times translate into performances. For Sacred-Profane, Tahir, wearing make-up, a wig and women’s shoes, slowly danced within a narrow office cubicle whose entrance he had concealed with red fabric. One could witness his movements only by watching his high- heeled feet through a gap at the bottom of this partition or peer at his obscured form through a window of frosted glass. He seemed to deliberately obscure the audience’s view of him so that they could instead concentrate on the scents that he conjured from a boiling pot placed on a hot plate. Tahir writes: “Using the city as a sensorial space, the work attempts to interpret the city through fragrance and aroma. From loban, or frankincense, to musky smells of agarbatti, as well as spices and flowers found in the region, the sense of smell is crucial to the city’s identity and the stories they tell.”

168 169 37. Qinza Najm

Born in 1976 in Sargodha. Lives and works in New York, USA.

Story of Rashida Series, 2018 Her Hammer: Rashida & Hathora Her Scissor: Rashida & Qainchi Her Shredder: Rashida & Shredder Archival prints 36 x 24 in. each

Qinza Najm contributed three large archival prints from her series Story of Rashida. Each black-and-white image presented a woman in hijab holding a tool in front of her face: in one she held a hammer, in another scissors, in yet another a kitchen shredder. The series was inspired by Martha Rosler’s 1975 video Semiotics of the Kitchen, which explored women’s oppression through domestication. Rather than take on a role herself, as Rosler did, Najm explores the semiotics and actual violence of banal objects for everyday women in Pakistan, where honor killings are still a pervasive and permitted practice. In her ongoing video, photographic and sculptural investigation, the artist presents portraits of various Pakistani women holding everyday objects that have been used against them as agents of domestic violence. In this iteration, she photographed a domestic worker named Rashida who had entered the public space in order to raise money to educate her three daughters.

170 171 172 173 38. Mareeha Safdar

Born in 1993 in London, UK. Lives and works in Karachi.

Dil Phenk (Heart Tossed), 2020 Performance 120 min.

Mareeha Safdar is an actor who has appeared on Pakistani television and web series, Bollywood feature films as well as British and Indian music videos. For her performance, which she called Dil Phenk, or, Tossed Heart, she carried the heart of what appeared to be a water buffalo. She lingered in front of Qinza Najm’s three black-and white photographs depicting a woman, her head covered, who held scissors, a hammer and a kitchen shredder in front of her face, almost as if they were a veil. Safdar, her face and head exposed, was dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt, which, as the performance progressed, became stained with the blood of the heart she carried. As she moved, she whispered soothingly to the heart. Occasionally, she would a lift an index finger to her lips in a bid to shush it, evoking, consciously or not, the words of William Mountfort’s Zelmane, written in 1705: “Ha! hold my Brain; be still my beating Heart.”

174 175 176 177 39. Zoya Alina Currimbhoy

Born in 1994 in Karachi. Lives and works in Karachi.

In Pursuit, 2020 Performance 120 min.

Zoya Alina Currimbhoy is a multidisciplinary artist based in Karachi. She graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2017 with a BFA in Painting and is currently an adjunct faculty member at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture. She engages in a cross-disciplinary, cross-national and experimental approach to art-making and in the past has actively collaborated with other artists, actors, dancers, activists and poets. Viewed from a hallway through a glass window, she was alone in the middle of a room, surrounded by piles of synthetic cotton. Dreamily, she gathered the material in her arms, then pared away at it with a knife, or used the same knife to shave it from the dress she wore. Throughout the performance, she cast powdered pigment onto the nebulous mounds of man-made material, which were lit by black lights, bathing them in neon tints. She wrote: “I am digging, ploughing, de-weeding, kneading, composting, anticipating. Anticipating a sublime botanical garden.”

178 179 180 181 40. Rahil Siddiqui

Born in 1995 in Karachi. Lives and works in Karachi.

Magic Words, 2020 Performance 120 min.

Rahil Siddiqui is a performing artist associated with the National Academy of Performing Arts in Karachi. He is interested in acting, poetry, writing, storytelling, contemporary movement and singing. He presented Magic Words, in which he sat in the corner of a small office cubicle and, dressed all in black, his hands and forearms painted red, attempted to play a game of Scrabble with himself. He asked a calligrapher to paint Urdu letters onto Scrabble-size squares. For his performance, he arranged and rearranged the tiles upon the board, trying to spell out a couplet that he had penned: Alfaaz khel hai alfaaz hi mein nehaan/Alfaaz tor phor kar kahin uchaal dijiye--Words are a game hidden in words/Twist them up and throw them around. There seemed, however, to be an inherent disconnect between the English-language set he played upon and the poetic fragment he wished to express: Were his Urdu words “acceptable,” according to the English rules of the game? For long periods of time he stared at the board in deep concentration, or lay his head down in utter frustration--even though his couplet in its Urdu original was displayed on a sign propped up before him for all to see.

182 183 184 185 41. Sheikh Safwan Elahi

Born in 1999 in Karachi. Lives and works in Karachi.

Mizaj-e-khuda (Divine Attitude), 2020 Performance 120 min.

Sheikh Safwan Elahi is an actor who also likes to paint. He performed in an office cubicle on the third floor, whose frosted windows he had dressed with red fabric in an attempt to imitate a domestic setting. Wearing a white shalwar kameez, he sat cross-legged on white sheets spread on the floor. In his lap was an almost life-size blond doll loosely covered in red fabric. Leaning against a wall was another doll, this one brunette and tightly wrapped in yellow. For two hours straight, he obsessively painted intricate patterns in henna, which are commonly applied to brides in South Asia, on the blond doll’s bare “skin.” As he did so, he possessively manipulated its limbs, “like a psychopath dominant husband of two wives,” he states.

186 187 188 189 THIRD FLOOR C

190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 42. Lujane Vaqar Pagganwala

Born in 1997 in Karachi. Lives and works in Karachi.

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, 2020 Performance 120 min.

Lujane Vaqar Pagganwala graduated from the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture in Karachi with a Bachelor’s in Fine Arts in 2019. She enjoys hands-on work, experimenting with different materials. Her emerging practice usually involves creating spaces through which, or with which, the audience can interact. For her performance, she transformed herself into a candy maker and methodically created a glistening “armature” of green, amber and brown confectionery that she melted with a blowtorch held in her gloved hands. Audience members, in this case imagined, could participate by either helping her build the structure or disassemble it by breaking off pieces to eat. Standing behind a counter, she made and remade her sculptural form.

198 199 200 201 43. Muhammad Osama Saeed

Born in 1996 in Karachi. Lives and works in Karachi.

Babylon, 2020 Performance 120 min.

Muhammad Osama Saeed is an aspiring filmmaker who currently works in advertising. For his performance, which he called Babylon, Saeed, shirtless beneath a long leather coat and wearing a pair of black jeans and dark glasses, stood on top of a counter on the third floor of Karachi House. Dancing sensuously to music that played in his head, he applied bright red lipstick, then marked not just his lips but his entire face and bare chest with it. By the end of his performance, he looked as if he were stained by blood. He writes: “Babylon enchants…with love, allures…with lust, and then leaves you feeling broken and sad.” In a startling juxtaposition, a video projection of Natasha Jozi seeming to dig her own grave played just behind him.

202 203 204 205 44. Natasha Jozi

Born in 1988 in Islamabad. Lives and works in Lahore.

Beneath the Surface, 2019 Video 13:23 min.

In 2017, Natasha Jozi founded House in Lahore, an independent initiative that explores the notion of the city as a performing organism, where she works towards generating discourse around performance art in Pakistan. Her video, Beneath the Surface, was projected onto a wall behind a counter on top of which Ayesha Jatoi, Muhammad Osama Saeed and Lujane Vaqar Pagganwala performed live. It documented her four- hour performance during a residency in Canada in 2019. In it, the artist seems to dig a grave. The video alternates between images of her repeatedly stabbing the ground and long moments of her lying in repose in the crevice that she creates. She writes: “The performance took place at the banks of the Red River in Winnipeg. The river is a dwelling presence in the city and over the years has become a body of memory, housing floating bodies of the those who went missing or got forgotten, sometimes found and sometimes lost in the river.”

206 207 45. Ayesha Toor

Born in 1975 in Karachi. Lives and works in Karachi.

Munn Jan (Beloved Soul), 2020 Performance 120 min.

Ayesha Toor is an actor and playwright for Pakistani television as well as a model. For Munn Jan (Beloved Soul), she was dressed as an archetypal working class Pakistani man in a white kurta over a black shalwar, a prayer cap on her head, a talweez, or, talisman, at her throat. Completing her transition, she adorned herself with a thick black moustache, that badge of Pakistani manhood. Her work touched on themes present elsewhere in the show, including those of patriarchy and gender. It also spoke of a solitude that we all paradoxically share: Throughout most of her performance, she gazed at a goldfish trapped in a bowl. She wrote: “My performance for Lal Jadoo is based on anonymity. In a world where we strive for recognition and validation, here I want to merge in the greys. Not stand out but hide behind a façade to adjust in society. While I do so, I lose my identity, relations and friends. I spit out fire and ashes and stay within the fishbowl, never speaking my truth or telling my story for I have lost faith in my audience. I have one true companion and with you I share our mutual story of loss and loneliness.”

208 209 210 211 46. Mohsin Shafi

Born in 1982 in Sahiwal, Punjab. Lives and works in Lahore.

Mass jhurey jhur pinjer hoyya, karken lagiyan hadyan (Skin slinks and crumples, bones creaking carcass), 2020 Video installation, color, no sound 3:30 min. loop

Mohsin Shafi uses collage, video, text, installation and performance to interrupt, confuse and disturb. Shafi’s contribution to the show was a video of uncut toenails before which he had placed tiny bottles filled with the nails of “fakirs” from Madhu Lal Husssain’s shrine in Lahore. The work is from Shafi’s ongoing seriesSacred Secrets. It is a fictional narrative that imagines Shah Hussain as a Muslim Sufi who fell in love with a Hindu boy, Madhu. The depth of their love is conveyed by the fact that Shah Hussain’s name was forever changed to Madho Lal Hussain and that they are buried next to one another. Shafi writes: “The shrine of Hussain and Lal and the fusion of their names speak for their unity and the magic (jadoo) of their love which challenges the customs of conventionalists.”

212 213 214 215 47. Samya Arif

Born in 1986 in La Coruña, Spain. Lives and works in Karachi.

Be Afraid, Close Your Eyes, 2020 Performance 120 min.

Samya Arif is a visual artist, illustrator and graphic designer. Her observations tend to embody women and the spaces they inhabit. For her work, eyes that she had illustrated were printed on stickers and applied to a glass partition on the third floor. As the exhibition unfolded, she systematically blackened the eyes with a thick-tipped marker, as if to blind them. She writes: “While people judge me for incorporating a part of our bodies into my art, it’s the eyes of men that stare and follow me everywhere when I’m outside. So then which eyes are the more threatening ones, my dreamed-up eyes or the lecherous gaze of the wolves outside? Soon the lights will go out and all the eyes will shut one by one, except perhaps the one.”

216 217 48. Tee Jay Sayyid

Born in 1993 in Istanbul, Turkey. Lives and works in Karachi.

(Work) Purge the Beast, 2020 Performance 120 min

Tee Jay Sayyid is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, fashion/artistic director and health care professional currently based in Karachi. For his performance, he was dressed as a kind of Belle Époque housewife with a heavily made-up face veiled in lace and a full-length turquoise skirt with matching jacket. But he had also applied incongruous touches to his romantic attire: a plastic baby doll was pinned to his head like a hat; around his neck curled industrial plastic tubing; on his right hand was a glove in the shape of a bear’s paw. For his performance, which he called (Work) Purge the Beast, Sayyid vigorously scrubbed a window that looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in years. By the end it, his elegant, off-kilter attire was sweated through. He elucidates: “This performance attempts to explore the theme of trauma and its representation via surrealism intertwined with domestication.”

218 219 220 221 49. Maha Minhaj

Born in 1993 in Karachi. Lives and works in Karachi.

Hold My Bag, 2020 Performance 120 min.

Maha Minhaj’s art practice is informed by the associations of the human body with everyday objects. For her performance, titled Hold My Bag, she spent the two hour- duration of the show pummelling a punching bag suspended from the ceiling. She had circled the floor beneath the bag with glittering stickers spelling out attitudes and positions she finds abhorrent. She writes: “This performance is about the not-so-subtle inner monologue when confronted with misogynistic, chauvinistic, gut-wrenching, confidence-shattering, gas lighting, underappreciating, underpaying, cheating, self- righteous, devious, double standard, greedy, homophobic, transphobic, classist, vain, disrespectful, cowardly, patronizing, big-headed, bad tempered, foul-mouthed and cruel environments or people.”

222 223 224 225 50. R.M. Naeem

Born in 1968 in Mirpurkhas, Sindh. Lives and works in Lahore.

Green + White = Red, 2020 Performance 120 min.

R.M. Naeem’s work explored the concept of ritual in Pakistan, and the dialogue that exists between its public display and private intent. As he states: “Rituals are a deep-rooted and distinctive part of our culture. There are different sides to a ritual, the outermost, revealed one (unhidden) and the one that hides deep within (hidden).” The Lahore-based painter asked Shehrish Willz to perform the work for him. Shrouded in a white burqa, she slowly walked in circles around a mound of fresh green chilies placed at the center of a white mat. As she circumambulated, she left an ever darkening trail of red pigment behind her. By the end of the performance, her ghost-like presence had left a deep crimson circle around the mound of chili with her repeated footfall, indelibly marking her presence.

226 227 228 229 51. Hira Khan

Born in 1993 in Karachi. Lives and works in Karachi.

Tankee Terminal, 2020 Performance 120 min.

Hira Khan primarily works with sculpture, experimenting with various materials. She is particularly drawn to ideas of closure. For her interactive installation, Tankee Terminal, she had suspended two blue fiberglasstankee , or water containers, from the ceiling. She had cut away their bottoms, rendering them useless as water vessels. Those curious enough to bend down and enter through the apertures she had created found themselves swimming in a kaleidoscope of multi-colored lights. Slowly orientating themselves in the claustrophobic space, their eyes rested on several human faces streaming in real time from a smartphone. The visitor could enter into conversation with these friends of the artist who, at her invitation, had logged in via Skype for the two-hour duration of the performance. In this context, virtual human contact took the place of life-sustaining water.

230 231 52. Faran Qureshi

Born in 1976 in Karachi. Lives and works in Karachi.

Taharat (Purity), 2020 Performance 120 min.

Faran Qureshi is a painter, musician and video director. He founded Pakistan’s first art video platform, Art TV Pakistan, which documents and promotes contemporary art in Pakistan. For his performance, Taharat, he sat in a chair, his head thrown back, holding a plunger to his mouth, which he obsessively worked up and down, as if to dislodge an obstruction. Hanging on a wall behind him was his own self-portrait, in which he performed the same act. An exhaust fan visible in the drawing was echoed by a fan humming from a window behind him that overlooked I.I. Chundrigar Road. He writes of the work: “’Taharat’ means purity not cleanliness. If a person is clean with a clean body and clothes he could be at the same time in a state of impurity...I use [a] drainage pump as [a] symbol of cleaning, [an] exhaust fan to decrease suffocation.”

232 233 53. Danyal Sadiq

Born in 1989 in Karachi. Lives and works in Karachi.

Obscured Lines, 2020 Performance 120 min.

Danyal Sadiq is an architect based in Karachi. He designs in the contemporary format, using bottom up methodologies. For his performance, Sadiq stood alone in an empty room which he had fitted with strobe lights. Viewed through a window that looked upon it, he seemed to appear and then magically reappear within the box-like space as the blinding strobes intermittently flashed. Throughout the performance, he, wearing sunglasses and carrying a measuring tape, methodically calculated the dimensions of the room. He states of the work: “Space and spatial conception [are] defined by a multitude of senses. Obscured Lines aims to blur the physicality of a defined space as perceived by the human eye, keeping things in the surreal realm. In a challenging setting, the performance itself is an attempt to try and identify what is space. Is it black, is it white, or are we living in the grey?”

234 235 54. Risham Syed

Born in 1969 in Lahore. Lives and works in Lahore.

Raga Bhopali, 2020 Sound clip 00:13:47 min. loop

Risham Syed uses found objects, textiles, pattern, margins, borders, frames and, more recently, sound to comment on history and contextualize it in the present. Syed’s contribution to the show was an homage to her mother’s lifelong devotion to South Asian classical music. She presented a sound clip from her mother’s archives, one of her lessons with Ustad Chote Ghulam Ali Khan learning Raga Bhopali. Thought to be 4,000 years old, Bhopali is one of the five oldest known ragas, along withMegh, Shree, Malkauns and Hindol, Syed points out. She goes on to say: “[My mother] continued to teach and sing for the rest of her life while her learning with prominent Ustads of the time never ended. This was her quest to excel at her craft. She learnt from Bhai Chaila, Feroze Nizami and eventually from Ustad Chote Ghulam Ali Khan. She diligently recorded all her lessons like an academic and it was her dream to make these archives accessible to [the] public.”

Samina Hasan Syed with Ustad Chote Ghulam Ali Khan on harmonium and poet, playwright, critic Najm Hosain Syed on Tabla. Lahore circa 1970.

236 237 55. Aroosa Rana

Born in 1981 in Lahore. Lives and works in Lahore.

The (Im)possibilities of Red, 2020 Archival print 36 x 55 in.

Aroosa Rana’s art is a constant query: Who is a viewer and who is being viewed? Her work challenges viewers in the same way that they are challenged by contemporary technologies–to decipher fact from fiction. On view at the exhibition was Rana’s archival print The (Im)possibilities of Red, in which the artist, and two other women, can be seen in multiple variations seated next to one another on identical chairs. The artist states: “This particular work The (im)possibilities of Red is from The Probabilities Series. This work is about the interplay of numbers and their predictability infused with the infinite possibilities that probability holds, and how this simple mathematical equation could serve as the basis of an art work, yet the artistic freedom stays intact.”

238 239 56. Sanki King

Born in 1990 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Lives and works in Karachi.

Identity Crisis, 2020 Performance 120 min.

Growing up, Sanki King was fascinated by American graffiti, hip hop and street culture. He started experimenting with graffiti in English as a teenager, which led to his explorations of portraiture, sneaker art, stencil art and Urdu, Punjabi and Arabic graffiti. For his work, Identity Crisis, King created a mural on an interior wall of Karachi House inspired by Leonardo Da Vinci’s drawing Vitruvian Man, the Renaissance master’s depiction of ideal human proportions. He had created a small ledge upon which he stood, his arms outstretched, in a repeat of the posture he had reproduced in paint. He could only hold the pose for so long before his limbs tired. He would then get off his perch, stare at his mural, and then try again, reminding himself—and the audience—that we are all far from perfection.

240 241 242 243 57. Tamasani Etlone

Born in 1991 in Karachi. Lives between Karachi and Toronto, Canada.

FUBAR - Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition, 2020 Performance 120 min.

Wearing a large maroon chador that covered his head and most of his face, Tamasani Etlone was positioned at the far end of the third floor. On top of a plinth, he had placed a smartphone, and working a delay peddle attached to it, caused sounds that he had arranged to sporadically play. Throughout the performance, he traced and retraced the topological surface of their reverberations as he envisioned them. Increasingly, the red and yellow tape travelling in rays from the smartphone to the floor took the shape of a pyramid. By transforming himself into a sort of shaman, Etlone wished to serve as a conduit between man and machine in a world he sees as increasingly dystopian. He writes: “The shaman sang the song of trees and fauna in the jungle but in the city sings of streets, electric cables and desire.”

244 245 58. Marvi Mazhar

Born in 1984 in Karachi. Lives and works in Karachi.

Fabrication of the Space: Action or Process of Inventing, 2020 Digital video, color, silent 6:00 min

Marvi Mazhar is an architect and heritage consultant based in Karachi. Her work focuses on the changing footprint of Karachi’s inner city through archives and constant visual ethnography of purana shehr (old town) versus naya shehr (new/reclaimed town). The video she created for the exhibition depicted an unnamed colonial-era building not far from Karachi House. In the opening shot, a long white strip of cloth can be seen suspended from a rope before a shut wooden door. Faded Urdu words in black and red are visible on the worn red and yellow paint of the sandstone façade. Two men, dressed in white shalwar kameez, carry the strip of fabric along a sidewalk before the building, where goats are tethered, then pause, stretching the cloth to its full length until they move out of the camera’s view. In our final glimpse, the two human agents, still invisible, slowly hoist the fabric from the roof until it slowly disappears. Only the façade of the building remains. In Pakistan, mourners often collectively sit upon white sheets to offer prayers to the departed. Viewed in this context, the video can be interpreted as a requiem for a vanishing architecture.

246 247 248 249 DRIVEWAY ITINERANT

STAIRCASE AND MIDDLE LANDING

MAIN FLOOR

250 251 59. Sheema Kermani

Born in 1951 in Rawalpindi. Lives and works in Karachi.

Backlash, 2020 Performance 120 min.

Political activist Sheema Kermani is a classical dancer who works in Odissi, Bharatnatyam and Kathak, but also choreographs in modern and contemporary dance. In 1979, she founded Tehrik-e-Niswan (the Women’s Movement), which she describes as a Cultural Action Group. She and members of her troupe performed a work called Backlash. Dressed in red kurtas, their heads and faces shrouded in long strips of red gauze, they executed a series of choreographed moves, first on the sidewalk before Karachi House, then its driveway, then within the building itself—and always as a single entity. Kermani writes: “Backlash…is the search for the truth. Where does the truth lie; perhaps somewhere in the middle; the area that rises above the usual! The performance is to acknowledge the past to make room for the present so that we can move into the future. The present can only move forward when it is invested with the past. The future is the hope!”

252 253 254 255 60. Syed Vajdaan Ali Shah

Born in 1983 in Jamshoro, Sindh. Lives and works in Karachi.

Seven Seconds, 2020 Performance 120 min.

Syed Vajdaan Ali graduated from the National Academy of Performing Arts, Karachi, where he is now visiting faculty. He has acted in stage productions and films and presented performances at various Karachi galleries. For his work, Seven Seconds, Ali fumbled blindfolded through Karachi House, a venue he intentionally did not see before the exhibition. His idea was to navigate the unfamiliar building with the help of audience members, to whom he would offer his hand for seven seconds. Before the performance, he wrote: “Sometimes the blind [can] see the essentials of life while [those] with vision miss out [on] the things that matter most…like holding hands for seven seconds.” As a lockdown was put in place in Karachi due to Covid-19 the night before the opening, and the curators requested the public to stay away and instead view the show through live stream, Shah was left on his own to navigate the unfamiliar terrain, much as the rest of the world was in the face of the novel virus.

256 257 61. Noreen Ali

Born in 1994 in Karachi. Lives and works in Karachi.

Sajji (Rotisserie), 2020 Performance with dead chicken 120 min.

Noreen Ali’s work investigates mundane objects and the significance they hold in their socio-political surroundings. For her performance, Ali, dressed in a sari and blouse, carried a dead chicken throughout the exhibition as if it were an infant, cooing to it in motherly tones. She wished to demonstrate her empathy for a sentient being that is raised in vast numbers in order to satisfy humanity’s ever growing need for food. Presented as much of the world, including Pakistan, went into lockdown as the Coronavirus spread, the work seemed prescient: While countries attempted to keep food supply chains open, many wondered how long basic food stuffs would remain available, or even attainable, especially in the developing world, where so many live a hand-to-mouth existence.

258 259 260 261 62. Sheema Khan

Born in 1982 in Karachi. Lives and works in Karachi.

Feeling Beautiful, 2020 Performance 120 min.

Sheema Khan graduated from Karachi University in 2005 with a distinction in miniature painting and ceramics and is currently pursuing her Master’s degree in History. For her work, she cast parts of her own body in plaster then stitched them onto the clothes she wore, including the mask adopted the world over during the age of the Coronavirus, or wore them like pieces of jewelry. She moved throughout the building, absorbed in her study of these duplicates of her own features. The work was an unusual glimpse into the near future: As the pandemic spread, and we found ourselves increasingly isolated from one another, more and more of us had no choice but to gaze fixedly at our own selves.

262 263 63. Zayed Malik

Born in 1991 in Lahore. Lives and works in Lahore.

The Noose, 2020 Performance 120 min.

Zayed Malik is a performance artist based in Lahore who graduated from Beaconhouse National University, Lahore in 2014. His work explores the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind. For his performance, Malik, wearing a black hood and a hangman’s noose around his neck, wandered phantom- like throughout Karachi House. He would pause for long moments next to other performers or their works, “observing” them through his eyeless hood, as if from the spirit world. Then he would continue his slow, silent ambulation throughout the building, occasionally stopping to sit by himself in the Art Deco-style stairwell, or perch on a dusty windowsill, absorbed in his own thoughts. The work seemed to speak, as others in the show also did, of the fluid membrane that separates life from death.

264 265 266 267 64. Rumana Husain

Born in 1952 in Karachi. Lives and works in Karachi.

Kaano may Andhi Rani (The Blind Queen Amidst Her One-Eyed Subjects), 2020 Performance 120 min.

Rumana Husain is an author, critic and activist. She presented Kaano may Andhi Rani (The Blind Queen Amidst Her One-Eyed Subjects), her variation on the popular Urdu proverb Andho may Kaana Raja--the One-Eyed King Among his Blind Subjects. For this performance, she wandered throughout Karachi House wearing a long wig of metallic red and waving a red flag, repeatedly saying in Urdu, “Na karo na”—Please don’t do it, as if she were attempting to exorcize any evil spirits that might cross her path. (The timely double entendre could also be heard as Na Carona—Don’t Carona.) She writes that, having grown up in South Asia, she has “always been made aware of forces beyond human comprehension.” She recalls interviewing a Makrani woman called Allah Bachai while attending the Sheedi Mela, or Crocodile Festival, in Manghopir, outside Karachi. The woman told her: “Some of the pilgrims who come to the Manghopir Mela are possessed by djinns and come here to be exorcised. They are dressed distinctively and carry a rumaal or misr (a large handkerchief: rumaal in Urdu and misr in Makrani) and hold danday (rods) in their hands. Other pilgrims get possessed by djinns while they are at the festival.”

268 269 270 271 65. Sadaf Malaterre

Born in 1969 in Karachi. Lives and works in Karachi.

Flow, 2020 Performance 120 min.

After studying and working in fashion in Paris, Sadaf Malaterre returned to Karachi 15 years ago to establish her own fashion label. The brand uses natural materials and encourages recycling. Wearing an earth-toned garment, her face covered with mud-colored make- up (save long, glittering pink lashes on her right eye), Malaterre’s wordlessly drifted throughout Karachi House as if she were a ghost. Her intention, she states, was to blend into the hues of the ageing building. Quoting the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver (1935-2019), Malaterre offers this glimpse into her performance: “’One morning the fox came down the hill, glittering and confident, and didn’t see me—and I thought: So this is the world. I’m not in it. It is beautiful.’”

272 273 274 275 LAL JADOO RED MAGIC

276 277 Performance-based practices move beyond the indication of spectacle, and acknowledge the body to actively show up in the work. The being present of the body in some ways makes it essential for the performance to be complete. The body might be present physically or non-physically THE BODY - in both ways, the body is present. Performative body requires an awareness of embodiment. The moment of cutting through the flesh and creating a unique transpersonal connection with its surroundings which is beyond words and ideas. When the performative body shows up, there is an eminent shift that happens in the body IS PRESENT which subsequently propels one to engage and experience it differently. That shift can be defined as the state of being to state of performing. As the body shifts from state of being to state of performing, it may shed or embody Natasha Jozi physical or mental traits, unearthing the body into a state of one-ness. The oneness of the act and the implications of the act on the body and mind. In Eastern study, moments of oneness of the body and mind is called Transcendence. While this has deep intellectual and spiritual relevance in Eastern philosophy and mysticism, it also holds immense meaning in performance art. Hazrat Inayat Khan describes this state of transcendence in his book as Vibrations. He states that the body manifests in a state of vibrations, that exude from the source of body and enter into body and beings around it; communicating, collaborating and connecting with them.

The Life Absolute from which has sprung all that is felt, seen, and perceived, and into which all again merges in time, is a silent, motionless and eternal life which among the Sufis is called Zat. Every motion that springs forth from this silent life is a vibration and a creator of vibrations. Within one vibration are created many vibrations; as motion causes motion so the silent life becomes active in a certain part, and creates every moment more and more activity, losing thereby the peace of the original silent life. It is the grade The body is present. of activity of these vibrations that accounts for the various planes of existence. These It contorts, planes are imagined to differ from one another, but in reality, they cannot be entirely bends, detached and made separate from one another. The activity of vibrations makes them breaks, grosser, and thus the earth is born of the heavens. bleeds, lengthens, - Hazrat Inayat Khan, The Mysticism of Sound, Music, The Power of the Word, Cosmic shrinks, Language shivers, screams, In spirituality we may normally call this meditation; an act that happens in solace, a personal spiritual emotes. journey without much need or urgency to share or exhibit the experience with anyone. In performance The body is present. art, while the performer enters into the state of one-ness, it employs into the performer the ability to not only exhibit this transitory mode, but perform it with an intent, an aesthetical or academic The concept of ‘Body as a medium’ has been around for around 100 years. Unlike the early 20th understanding of the act, and the implication of the act. In order to achieve this one-ness, repetition century performative works, contemporary performance art discourse no longer carries a similar of an action and duration also play a pivotal role. urgency to challenge the status quo, nor essentially seeks only to create a shock, defy or reject. In Eastern philosophy, the concept of body as container is central to its study. The body In contemporary performative practices, the concept of body as a medium significantly delves into is a vessel that channelizes and carries energy, emotions and spirit of the body. Body inherently physical and psychological modes of being. Furthermore, the artists have moved towards museums inhabits or exists in a non-physical space. The physical body therefore becomes secondary and the and galleries backed by institutional funding, and no longer exhibit solely in alternative spaces. mental, the non-physical, and the spiritual are where the body finds it true form. Performance art is no longer devoid of critical or institutional affirmation, rather is greatly informed Japanese mythology speaks about this nonphysical space through the concept of Ma. Ma by intellectual and aesthetic resolve. as a symbol denotes - a crevice or a crack from where the moon light enters. The Dada Manifesto circa 1917, Fluxus, American Avant Garde under John Cage, Kaprow’s Ma literally means the empty; the space between edges, silence between two notes, Happenings and Environments, endurance art, the Abramović method, were all driven, to a degree, the negative space, the moment of stillness, the vacuum in space. Ma is filled with embodiment of from a sense of rebellion or revolt. They were questioning through performance; the act of art making, the emptiness. It is filled with nothing but energy and feeling; a sensation that can’t be identified, role of the artist and modes of consumption of art. a sentence that cannot be structured, an emotion that cannot be experienced or expressed. It is If this is true, then performance art as we know it today is no longer as political, mysterious, within the emptiness of the Ma that all is felt, experienced, expressed. exclusive or exotic. It is no longer the other, the relegated, the rebellious. Today, we are forced to Moments of performativity and experiences in and around the performative body are engage with the medium authentically, shedding away the spectacle or shock value and contest similar to the space of Ma. The shifts that happen between the body’s state of being and state of critically its contribution and impact on art making. performing exists in this in-between space. Spectacle, as the most immediate, is a transitory moment of realizing a body’s The actions performed during a performance art piece hold a greater deeper meaning presence. Body inherently exhibits, and creates a spectacle. Spectacle is subservient to the idea that contests directly with theatre or dramaturgy of any kind. A performance piece cannot therefore of performativity and can be deceptive. Spectacle can often be reductive, borrowing aspects of the just be a series of actions arranged in a sequence, or materials brought together and arranged in body from life, however not consciously understanding the complexities of how the body is being an order or disorder. That is not relevant. What the body enacts is not relevant, what you see is not represented. Spectacle is the primary mode of the body; it is transient. relevant. It is the in-between of experience where performance happens.

278 279 As the body enacts performative acts it allows the body to become one with the mind and embody the emotions and associations that are awoken through the performance. It becomes a personal and subjective experience, and one which cannot be planned, rehearsed, scripted, staged or repeated. The moment of a performative experience starts abruptly and ends abruptly. The performative act is all that is said in the unsaid, performed in the unperformed, experienced in the unexperienced. The body may be present; however, it is not only in the presence of the body that you experience the performance. Contemporary performative experience invokes inclusivity in the exhibition of the performative body. The experience of a performative work instills in the viewer a sense of involvement, allowing them to situate themselves in the performance for a deeper experience. How the body manifests itself in private, public, subaltern, gendered, political, conflicted or erased space becomes essential materials of the performative act. With this one starts observing the lines being blurred between life and art in the most literal sense. Where does body end and performance start? It is essential to understand and study the parameters of what to expect from a performance art piece, and be open to experiencing the unrehearsed and unexpected. It is consequently essential to be aware how the body shows up, how the body enacts, how the body experiences, how the body is present.

280 281 As I made my way through the performers, I saw Ali Samoo on a landing of the staircase weaving a web of chewing gum that he spewed out of his mouth like a spider would out of its abdomen. He would then offer it to the much disgusted and dumfounded watchers. I climbed past LAL JADOO: him hurriedly, with my own anxieties of setting up my space, but it was impossible not to run into the anxieties of other performers in action. These came in the form of Abdullah M. I. Syed’s video, Flesh and Blood, in which he fed himself roses, and Danish Raza’s performance, Bloodlines, where I found him sitting in a hospital wheelchair with a blood bag that he dragged everywhere, drawing red lines KARACHI HOUSE on a sketchbook on his lap. Others ensued, including Qasim Raza Shahin’s video performance, Husn Pahadon Ka, where he posed as a local groom, commonly adorned with a headband made out of bright red rose petals. Not far away, Amber Arifeen played the chained bride, adorned in a red gown Syed Ammad Tahir ordinarily worn by South Asian brides. On the other side of the staircase was a nuanced version of the rose by Meher Afroz. Petals were scattered about on a white sheet, which ran up the steps and expanded into a vast, vertical paper wall. Upon closer inspection, I could see that the inviting carpet of rose petals was interlaced with inverted nails jutting from the steps. I moved into the hallway to find Shakira Masood sitting on a stool in a rather creepy scenario that included curtains, fairy lights and a scrawny man in giant diapers that I thought would fall off of him at any second. His face was covered by an equally giant mass of hair from the wig that too seemed to slide off his head. I recognised him immediately. It was the famous, or rather infamous, Jamal Ashiqain with whom Shakira was collaborating for their dark fantasy performance, The Spell. I felt dizzy. I gathered myself and moved along the corridor trying to shed off the cringe I had just experienced only to find Rameez Rehman suspended from the ceiling, trapped in a mirror-studded cage, yowling at the top of his lungs. By now I should have adjusted to the new reality of the fantastical, magical world I had entered a while back but I found myself shuddering. Almost as if my prayers were The weird sisters, hand in hand, answered, I saw myself in a heavenly powder room paradise. This I discovered was Emaan Mahmud’s Posters of the sea and land, Healing Meditation for High Society Feminists. Even though I am no feminist, I found the space healing Thus do go, about, about: enough. Perhaps the voices coming from the adjoining room contributed to that as well. It was Asma Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine, Mundrawala’s performance, Kafoori Chirya. And thrice again, to make up nine. Trying to find my way through the disorienting space, I must have turned towards Peace, the charm’s wound up. something I wasn’t meant to, or perhaps I was. The curators made sure of it. It was like that song William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 3 ‘Hotel California’ where you can enter but can never leave. On the far end of the kitchen was the writhing, wriggling body of a woman half immersed in an oven. Very Sylvia Plath. This was Critical On the 15th of March 2020, at about four o’clock in the afternoon, I ordered an Uber to take me to Domesticity by Marium Habib. A live rooster in a cage, possibly shitting everywhere in its humble Karachi House, the venue for the performance exhibition Lal Jadoo (Red Magic), of which I was a abode, was the work of Saks Afridi, aptly titled Chicken Shit Future. Niilofur Farrukh and Sibtain Naqvi part. I gathered the remaining part of my costume, shoved it in a giant bag along with candlesticks, had conjured up the spectre of the late master painter Sadequain, who was also Naqvi’s uncle. There threads, needles, incense and the rest of it, as I rushed downstairs to the car. The novel virus, now is nothing like living the memory of a legend by becoming him, albeit temporarily. known as Covid-19, had entered the city but the lockdown had not yet been enforced. The curators I finally found my own kitchen, which looked less like a kitchen and more like a bordello. of the show, however, had decided to act responsibly and close the exhibition to public visitors. All I threw my bags on the floor and frantically began arranging materials, objects and articles on the performances were to stream live on Facebook. ledge. Before I could throw myself into my own performance, like a curious cat, I had the urge to As I arrived at Karachi House, situated on one of the busiest roads of downtown Saddar and quickly sneak out one last time and see what else was in store. I spotted Erum Ero perched in a thronged by crumbling colonial architecture on either side, I saw a group of people in red costumes corner with her collaborator. She had told me that they were going to scribble the word ‘love’ on each at the entrance to the building. I instantly knew that the magic had begun. This group of people other in various languages. The other side seemed bleak--not for a lack of performers, but the kind belonged to Sheema Kermani’s young dancers’ clan. They were getting ready for their performance, of performances taking place. Zoya Alina Currimbhoy was sheepishly sitting in a room with an eerie Backlash, on the pavement, fearlessly confronting the curious passers-by. I went through the gates glow emanating from the walls from the UV lights she had installed. Her performance, In Pursuit, was and saw much more than I had anticipated. I had assumed that I was early but I was in fact late. a grim reminder of what happens to sheep at farms when their wool is shaved off their skins. Except Many other participants had already taken their places and were performing. Video works she was the sheep shaving her own wool. were projected on the adjacent walls, along with photographic works, one of which immediately In another room, a boy I didn’t know was playing with dolls. I later found out this was Sheikh caught my eye. This was Ayesha Jatoi’s Clothesline with red fabric hanging off of a monumental fighter Safwan Elahi performing Mijaz-e-Khuda, another unsettling phenomenon that I happily moved away jet. The works also included videos by Abdullah Qureshi, Tazeen Qayyum, and others. A shirtless from towards a slightly more palatable game of Urdu Scrabble that Rahil Siddiqui was playing by man with a chiselled chest, wearing black pyjamas and an executioner’s hood over his head, whom himself for his performance, Magic Words. I was certain that there must be several other engaging, I later came to know was Zayed Malik, was particularly difficult to ignore. On the same floor were disturbing, bizarre, unusual (and downright unwatchable), beautiful, powerful performances being several others, from Mirchi Ali unceremoniously pouring sand over his head, to Noor Ahmed, who played out, but I had to rush back to my spot as the event was about to begin with all the might sat in a makeshift living area wrapping gifts. All of a sudden, Adeela Suleman’s bright red mandala and energy that Amin Gulgee and Sara Pagganwala had injected into the cosmos they had created. animations, Are You Sleepy Yet? pierced my eyes. As the animation played on, words appeared with On my way back, I almost lost my lunch when I saw a girl, Mareeha Safdar, holding a cow’s heart in the visualisations. The text stating, ‘You Are Drowsy’ seemed to contradict the sharp wakefulness her hands for her performance, Dil Phenk. The surprises were incessant. On the other side of my the mandalas induced. space, thankfully, was a familiar face. Samya Arif was blacking out pink, bulbous eyes on a wall in her performance, Be Afraid, Close Your Eyes. I think I did close my eyes just then, and when I awoke, it was time to go home.

282 283 She always knew art was a luxury product but she was beginning to feel that performance art was something of a luxury experience. It was a luxury to stand there in front of strange art and consume the energy emanating from the artist, and have the luxury to reject or accept the thought STRANGE ART IN process behind the art. Before the invention of Pakistani performance art, Champa’s favorite way of consuming art was to get artists to make commissioned work and then also request them to frame her work for her without paying them for the time they spent framing her piece. If they refused to frame the STRANGE TIMES work (which they rarely ever did), she would ghost them. So, when a lot of these artists, instead of acting like her personal assistants, started doing strange things in the name of art, she got a little concerned because now the artists were not being controlled by the collectors. They were being Emaan Mahmud controlled by their self-destructive emotions. She felt that this new and strange outlet was causing the artists to become even bigger slaves of their own emotions, instead of being slaves to collectors. In the long run this would not be good for them. Collectors are much smarter than artists and the artists should learn a thing or two from people richer than them. Especially since it’s really not that difficult to make an abstract painting. Yet right now she couldn’t show her displeasure because she needed to appear socially conscious at all times and performance art was a trend now; everyone was becoming a performance artist. She liked to think that commissioned work was a way to support the arts but, according to some people, what ‘support’ meant to Champa was perceived as exploitation by others. In Champa’s eyes, support meant guiding artists onto the right path. And that would be to make art that has value of the financial kind. She wondered what made these artists want to look intentionally ugly, act in an unacceptable way, when they can be making pretty art for pretty people like her. Had compliments from important people like her become irrelevant to these artists? Champa wasn’t someone who gave up on these issues without a fight, so she decided she will figure out a way to ‘collect’ performance art. And make these rebellious artists crave her approval again. But how does one even start collecting performance art? Usually, the consumption Performance art had always occupied a very strange place in Champa’s mind. It was also an uncharted of performance relied on numbers. The more people there were to view the performance, the better. territory and Champa did not like new territories, unless she knew she was going to conquer them. But one Champa was better than a hundred middle class, instant coffee drinking people. Since the very first time it was imported from the West into Pakistan by some agent pretending to be She also considered doing a counter performance. If only her other rich friends had been an artist, Champa had been confused. How does performance art benefit our art collecting culture? able to attend this show, she would have had loud conversations with them about her expensive What is the utility of art if it cannot be bought? How can anything exist if it’s not being utilized by a vacations and extravagant parties, making sure the artist (in mid-performance) could hear her. That rich person? Why should anything be created if it’s not benefiting the wealthy? Can collectors ever way, she could still have some form of control over this oddity now being labeled art. benefit from performance art? Another brilliant idea she had was to start commissioning performances. She could pay On the 15th of March, Amin Gulgee and Sara Pagganwala curated a show called ‘Lal Jadoo’, an artist to do artistic things and call it a performance. She could commission video art and sound putting together about 60 artists, including Champa, in a fascinating space. (Her work was a golden pieces, too. As long as her name was there alongside the artist, for the world to see. She could even meditation room; she would never perform herself.) This space was an old building on I. I. Chundrigar envision a sign with a logo: ‘This performance has been generously funded by Champa’. Road. Performers were spilling out of the building. Some performances were right at the entrance. Performance art commissions could also be another great way to launder black money. It was a visual overload, which Champa usually enjoyed. She felt insecure if she were to view one Maybe she could get all her rich friends to support one artist each and she could curate her own performance in isolation, but in this way, she could view four of five performances in one glance – performance art show? Speaking of money, black and white both (because Champa isn’t a racist), that made her feel important. She had even practiced her ‘looking at performance art’ expression in since the only people making money during Covid times would be pharmaceuticals, hospitals and front of the mirror. This expression had to resemble the look of an intense thought mixed with some businesses that offer deliveries, she wondered if the next wave of art collectors was to come from insight and understanding. And it had to be coordinated with the right body language, an ever so this group? slightly tilted head, just ten degrees to the right. Maybe also some gentle head nodding. She wondered if this pandemic might even give rise to another art movement. But were What made ‘Lal Jadoo’ even more special was that it took place on pretty much the last Pakistanis even innovative enough to invent an art movement? We usually just adopt whatever is normal weekend Champa spent. The world as we knew it before everything shut down. She wasn’t happening in North America and Europe. Maybe Champa could be the one who would start an art sure how to feel about that: spending the last normal weekend looking at performance art, with no movement in a post Covid world. fancy dinners afterwards, which otherwise would have been an opportunity to talk about the show. She was also concerned that artists might move further away from the control of What’s the point of experiencing art if you have no one to discuss it with? No one to share your collectors. And what if they stop caring about money altogether and start putting up strange work ingenious insight with? Looking at art is only beneficial when you have parties to go to afterwards online? What will be the role of collectors then? However, she wasn’t too worried about this, because and have people to talk to about it. What good is art otherwise? the collectors were the ones who were pumping money into the art world. What was even more tragic was that the public wasn’t allowed to attend ‘Lal Jadoo’ A wise man at a fancy dinner had once told Champa that performance art can never work because of the lockdown. So the entire show went virtual. That made Champa very sad because she in Pakistan because the viewer needs to let the artist touch their mind, but in Pakistan, touching would not be seen looking at the art by the right crowd. Since ‘Lal Jadoo’ was still attended by some is usually frowned upon. And now, after Corona (AC), touching is a thing of the past. Plus, Champa people, there were performances of multiple types, some by the artists and some by the viewers. The wasn’t a huge fan of new and different experiences because it was difficult to have an intelligent viewers’ performances consisted of them pretending to understand the art in front of them. Champa opinion on new things. And having an intelligent opinion on everything is way more important than also put on her performance while looking at a performance, despite the lack of a public. experiencing new things. But she still had to pretend to be politically correct. Yet her suspicions

284 285 remained about this sudden surge of performance art. She wondered if she would be able to find something on American performance art on WikiLeaks because she was sure performance art was a CIA-sponsored social experiment on rich and intelligent Americans that has now been imported to Karachi. But because performance art lacked financial transactions, it automatically became anti- capitalist art. This made Champa wonder if some of these performance artists were communist spies, sent by Russia. Attending ‘Lal Jadoo’ was like being in a very well directed, artistic horror movie, but Champa could not say that out loud so she simply walked around with a smile on her face. Maybe most of these people were communists who didn’t care about looking pretty. However, consuming horrific performance art did make Champa feel smarter. She felt like she had gone inside the artists’ minds and come out grateful for her happy and well off existence. Overall, she was proud of her ‘I understand strange art’ performance at ‘Lal Jadoo’. She had looked at all the performances without letting her true feelings show. But Champa wasn’t sure how effective this performance of hers on understanding art would be in the post Covid world. What would exhibits be like in a post Covid world? How will art change? Just the feeling of being totally clueless about the outcome of this situation made her feel powerless. What will parties be like now? How would one even stay popular in a post Covid world? How would one hold intelligent conversations, let alone socialize, with people one hates? These were very valid questions and, since she had most of the answers, she considered starting her own YouTube channel. She also wanted to start a cultural party which would help artists, writers and all humans contributing to culture. Maybe that cultural party could give birth to the next art movement from Pakistan, with Champa as its flag bearer. And, as far as the show going virtual went, Champa had even more questions: What is art now? Is art something you can now watch on Instagram? And, if art has now gone online, is it not competing with all the other strange things people watch on the internet? Now people can choose whether to watch a performance art video vs a cute puppy video. Since puppies aren’t halal, Champa refrained from watching dog videos, but would other people? This deeply worried her. Cats are halal; maybe people would watch cat videos then. These artists put their hearts and souls in their work, and even if some of the work is nightmare inducing, one must appreciate it. Because important curators are telling you it is art. And how would the context of performance art change? Most of the collectors and other less fortunate consumers of art viewed ‘Lal Jadoo’ online. How would the context of art change if it’s being viewed on a phone? Truth be told, Champa was always a little scared of Pakistani performance art. And she was scared that, post Covid, performance art will become even darker. Dark things scared her because Champa was an enlightened woman who didn’t have any dark thoughts. Since Champa was also a self-trained psychologist, she also understood that in a state of global pandemic and uncertainty, most egotistical, insecure people become more aggressive and controlling because they cannot deal with the huge loss of control over their lives. Which is why she decided she will start with online therapy classes for artists. And teach artists how to be happy and grateful. Champa was scared that if she doesn’t save the artists from themselves, what will happen? Who knows what shade of black performance artists in a post COVID world might adopt?

286 287 May Day! May Day!

The spread of the Covid-19 virus was declared a pandemic on 11 March 2020. But because the show JADOOGIRI must go on, the Lal Jadoo happenings set off more or less to plan on 15 March with precautionary measures in place. The event was closed to visitors and hermetically sealed from the world of its making. Many of us tried to catch the action on Facebook live. There were glitches. The connection Mariah Lookman dropped a few times. The signals were not always so stable. Who was to know then that this event was a first in many more to come. It has been reported that a record number of us are presently addicted to WhatsApp and in no unequal measure find ourselves desperately peering into the smartphone or the computer screen, anxious. Mostly just anxious for news, for the latest Trump tweet, or any Prime ministerial gag. From anywhere really, news is news is news. Many weeks have gone by. The noise on the web offers free online concerts, webinar talks, Zoom meetings, online dance, yoga, P E with Joe, museum tours, groceries delivery, food delivery, gourmet ice cream delivery, free Netflix, online classes, online schooling, online university, free Covid-19 coverage, online exhibitions, and nonstop news. Covid-19 statistics are both unabated and surreptitiously deafening in scope with little time to really get some space to just think. Petrified however, we have not turned into stone but into a zombie state. I think we may have collectively accepted too many cookies. It must be a sugar thing. While we thought that we were paying attention, but also not listening, we are now irreversibly hooked to a commodities exchange mechanism via the screen. This is no mean feat. Hard currency is fast becoming obsolete. Payments are cashless, cards only. The monitor is monitoring the monetary. Alert! We should be by now dazzled by the glare of everything around us going Red, or blink. Caution! The first day of May came and went. I am very aware of it. My sense of the outside world however, Many millions are signing up (where a system for signing up actually exists). The real unemployment despite the delusion of a certain heightened sense of awareness; the flashes of clarity are mostly figures will not be known. All that we do have are approximate guesstimates. The real figures that a figment of the imagination. On May Day we were under military-style curfew in Sri Lanka. Curfew are possible though are the net worth of the likes of Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren violators are being arrested here on a daily basis. On May Day it was beautiful outside. There was a Buffet, Lakshmi Mittal, Mukesh Ambani or Jack Ma. Where they pay taxes though is also foggy. There pleasant breeze. The sky was blue. The skies could be clearer still I thought, but the trees and the is talk of basic universal credit but deep distrust of the politician. In markets we trust. Christie’s grass and the hills at the back have been throwing up all conceivable shades of green.Every evening online auction sales meanwhile have set a new all-time record. I see a young boy in the unkempt paddy field trying to fly a kite that appears to be larger than himself. I suspect the winners and the losers will become clear as we are emerging from the global state of The grass is almost as tall as he is. The boy hides well. lockdown. And after that what do we expect? Exhibition title: Lal Jadoo/Red Magic. Red is the colour. A flag, a rouse, red is the mode of operation. It is the function that unites somewhat disparate artistic practices, unified by the colour and action So here are my dozen additions to the list of predictions for the art world in the age of the Covid-19 of performance work both past and present. As I scroll the artist’s statements, some images stick. pandemic: Some I was able to conjure. Cockscomb: Communism: Lal masjid: love: Roohafza: (concentrated squash): lal dawai (red 1. Art viewing, buying, and selling will be a privilege of the few. medicine): blood: red army: sandoor: henna: red roses: violence: passion: pain: fire: martyrdom: 2. International interest in art from countries that constitute the periphery shall wane panic? (although I pray everyday this will not be the case). 3. Museums will feel like dinosaur establishments. 4. People will get lazy about actually going out to see an exhibition. A visit to the museum will be considered high-risk. 5. In the interim period online showcasing shall thrive for a short while. Besides, what is the point of going to an exhibition opening wearing a facemask and the prospect of no aperitif? 6. In the meantime, video, moving images and films shall fill the exhibition gap. 7. Artist studios shall flourish. 8. Painting will be resurrected and given a new life (again, after many deaths). 9. Painting will become a free space that cannot be transubstantiated by the screen. 10. Making things by hand will be considered subversive. 11. Religious themes shall make a comeback. 12. Art with ideas will need to be saved. The danger however is that the Fascist regimes (also read neoliberal capitalists) shall co-opt the services of the artist.

The Communists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote the Manifesto in secrecy in 1828. If, as they claimed, the history of all existing society is the history of class struggles, feudalism and capitalism are destined for defeat, to be replaced by a workers’ society. We are most certainly not witnessing

288 289 the collapse of capitalism. Rather, complete capitulation to liberal capitalism. This I wonder: What do artists do to recuperate the avant-garde impulse? After all, painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, performance, poetry, and even film constitute artworks. Therefore, when artists work, the product they produce is a work of art/artwork. Artists, since they are not art-workers, all the same everywhere continue to be a part of an industry of their own subjugation. It may not be surprising, as it so happened that the first modern pamphleteering exercise by an artist was undertaken by the Alexandria-born Italian Fillippo Tommaso Marinetti as the “Declaration of Futurism” which appeared in the Paris Figaro on Saturday 20 February 1909. For a reason (still not clear to me), given our present moment going all red, I thought it worthwhile to revisit this fantastic war valorising his misogynist declaration of futurism:

We will destroy museums, libraries and fight against moralism, feminism and all utilitarian cowardice. We will sing the great masses agitated by work pleasure or revolt: we will sing the multi-coloured and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of arsenals and docks beneath their glaring electric moons; greedy stations devouring smoking serpents; factories, hanging from clouds by the threads of their smoke; bridge like giants gymnasts stepping over sunny rivers sparkling like a diabolical cutlery; adventurous steamers scenting the horizon; large breasted locomotives bridled with long tubes, and the slippery flight of aeroplanes whose propeller has flag-like fluttering and applauses of enthusiastic crowds.1

Should it be a surprise that Benito Mussolini, founder of the fascist movement, coined the term fascism nearly a decade later in 1919? Mussolini went on to influence Adolf Hitler. Sadly, Hitler had wanted to become a professional artist. Apparently he used to live in Vienna where he was selling his paintings and postcards to earn a living from 1908 to 1913 in the hope of passing the entrance exam of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. He failed-- but, I have seen his paintings, would history be any different? If Hitler Had Been a Hippy How Happy Would We Be is a question?2

kyaa hum bhi dekhenge?3

Will we sing the multi-coloured and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals? In our post truth, post medium condition, what do artists do? There is another great quote from a sage that comes to mind: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”4 Can it be the sugar mountain folks I wonder? Take a picture, and upload it. It is your reference, your personal images storage. Nobody told you that the Cloud is not a fluffy, nebulous entity. You were told that this way you need not worry about access, retrieval, wires, and maintaining a hard drive. This is your record. You travel light. This is how your friends know what you are up to. I think I ate vanilla ice cream at the party yesterday. Oh, look, party pictures. Your ice cream is pink. It has to be strawberry. Then it must be strawberry. I was so sure I had vanilla.

May 2020, Galle, Sri Lanka

Endnotes

1 F. T. Marinetti, “Declaration of Futurism,” Figaro, Paris, Saturday 20 February 1909. https://monoskop. org/images/1/1c/Poesia_5_3-6_Apr-Jul_1909.pdf#page=3 2 After Jake and Dinos Chapman, White Cube Gallery, Mason’s Yard, London, 2008. 3 After the poem Hum dekhenge by Faiz Ahmad Faiz, 1979-81. 4 George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Secker and Warburg, 1949.

290 291 CURATORS

Sara Vaqar Pagganwala received her BFA (hons) from Central St. Martins, University of the Arts, Lon- Amin Gulgee is an artist-curator based in Karachi, Pakistan. He received a BA in Art History and Eco- don and is a multidisciplinary artist and curator. She has been a part of several group shows locally nomics from Yale University in 1986. He has exhibited his sculpture and installation all over the world. and internationally. Her work explores the construction and rearrangement of different materials and His most recent solos were “7” at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Rome, Italy and “7.7” at Mattatoio, properties and asks questions about form and control. She also investigates notions of the body Rome, Italy (2018). He has been active as a curator in Karachi since the 1990s. A working artist, he and identity as a repetitive constant, especially in her performative work. Pagganwala was an as- questions the power hierarchy of curatorship. Through his cross-disciplinary approach, he explores sistant curator for the inaugural Karachi Biennale 2017 and curated Mix Tape (1), The Quantum City: unlikely connections to uncover alternative narratives. In 2000, he established the Amin Gulgee Gal- Territory | Space | Place, which was the first International Public Art Festival at the iconic Karachi Port lery, an artist-led, non-commercial space where he also lives and works. He regularly collaborates Trust (co-curated with Amin Gulgee and Zarmeene Shah); Lal Jadoo, an exhibition of performance with outside curators to realize large-scale projects there. The gallery’s primary focus is on contem- art at Karachi House and a part of the second International Public Art Festival which was aired live porary Pakistani art. It has also engaged with South-South dialogues, presenting shows highlighting (co-curated by Amin Gulgee); The Trojan Donkey, a virtual international performance show happen- the connections between African and Southeast Asian art and contemporary Pakistani practices. ing simultaneously in over 28 different cities around the world (co-curated by Amin Gulgee and Adam Exhibitions at the gallery are usually accompanied by catalogues. They include the scholarly volumes Fahy-Majeed).Pagganwala currently lives and works in Karachi. She has worked as an assistant cu- Artists’ Voices: Calligraphy and Artists’ Voices: Body (Oxford University Press, 2006) and Pakistan’s rator at Canvas Gallery and is as part of the adjunct faculty in the Liberal Arts department at the Radioactive Decade: An Informal Cultural History of the 1970s (Oxford University Press, 2019.) The Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, where she designed and introduced performance art as gallery is also one of the first to provide a platform for performance art in Pakistan. It has hosted a course for the first time in Pakistan. two exhibitions dedicated specifically to it: “Riwhyti: One Stand” (2013) and “Dreamscape” (2015). The most recent show at the gallery was “Outsiders” (2018). A collaboration between the Amin Gul- gee Gallery and the Goethe-Institut, it was a multidisciplinary exploration of urban subcultures in Pakistan and Germany. Gulgee was Chief Curator of the inaugural Karachi Biennale in 2017, which included the work of 182 artists from Asia, Australia, Africa, Europe, South America and North Ameri- ca. In 2019, he curated 32 international artists for “One Night Stand / Coup d’un soir,” an exhibition/ happening of performance art at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris, France. The same year, he co-curated, with Sara Pagganwala and Zarmeene Shah, “The Quantum City: Territory | Space| Place” for the first International Public Art Festival in Karachi. In April of 2020, he, along with Sara Pagganwa- la and Adam Fahy-Majeed, curated “The Trojan Donkey,” an online exhibition of performative videos featuring 85 works from over 25 countries.

292 293 “LAL JADOO”: A video catalogue

This catalogue accompanies the exhibition “LAL JADOO” curated by Amin Gulgee and Sara Vaqar Pagganwala at Karachi House for the International Public Art Festival 2020 on March 15, 2020

ISBN 978-969-23435-2-7

Design: Muniba Rasheed Architectural Mapping: Marvi Mazhar & Associates

Photography: Farhan Baig, Mutahir Farooq, Charlene Wanja Lenny, Humayun Memon, JY Photo, Imraan Sheraz Videography: Bilal Ghouri, Jamshed Farhad Irani

Essays: Adam Fahy-Majeed, Amin Gulgee, Natasha Jozi, Mariah Lookman, Emaan Mahmud, Syed Ammad Tahir

Artist Texts: John McCarry Editor: John McCarry

© Texts: The authors © Images: The photographers © Artworks: The artists

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means with- out the prior permission in writing of the publisher, authors or artists.

Special thanks to the Pagganwala family for gener- ously making Karachi House available for the exhibition.

294 295 296