Helping artists move beyond borders

KARACHI:

There are programmes that are giving artists and curators the opportunity to move across borders to know and form links with the people and spaces they want to depict in their artwork.

“When I went to London, I wanted to work with the migrant communities there but once there I saw that people in the UK are less aware of how colonialism influenced us in South Asia,” said Fazal Rizvi, an artist who went to London, while speaking at the ‘Beyond Borders’ session on the third day of the 7th Karachi Literature Festival. “This triggered my project; I had the British Library at my disposal so it was a rich exchange.”

Experiencing space

The artists stressed the importance of an immediate experience necessary for artwork to convey the message its creator intends. They had been to the UK but had different stories to tell apart from English culture. “When I was walking on the streets of London, English was the last language that hit my ears,” said curator Hajra Haider. “This is because speakers of different dialects and languages live there.” She added that her residency gave her a chance to venture into previously unexplored territories. “In the British Museum I saw that yes we were a colony but we were not the only ones and our story is shared by many other [nations].”

The artists are also working to bring to the fore the plight of migrants. “We have an exhibition coming up where boats and seas would show the plight of migrant workers and the desperate measures they took in returning to their home countries, facing hazardous situations in the sea,” said Deborah Robinson, a British artist.

Funding and access

However, artists are still restricted to some extent as there is only one direction, they believed, that could be looked to when it came to funding - the West. However, Haider said besides funding, access also plays a part in helping artists grow, cross barriers to share their work and learn. “It is amazing how the number of art schools is increasing in this country,” she said. “With so many artists budding, there have to be opportunities created for them.”

Robinson reiterated the statement, saying before travelling to Pakistan her knowledge of the country was based on the news she saw on the television and that was full of conflict. “My relationship with Pakistan began in 2012 when I went to Karachi and Lahore; we also went to Dhaka in Bangladesh,” she explained. “There was a lot to see and it took time for me to digest and reflect what I saw of the country.”

Published in The Express Tribune, February 8^th,  2016.