Engaging people through art: Karachi’s first biennale to take place in October this year

80 Pakistani and 40 international artists to showcase work at the event

KARACHI: The Karachi Biennale will take place in October this year and its aim is to connect art to the city and its people.

“We are seated today in a place that the great Sadequain was painting the ceilings of because he wanted to give something credible to the city. Similarly we want to do something memorable for the city,” announced artist Niilofer Farrukh at the Sadequain Gallery at Frere Hall on Saturday. “Karachi is a city that has produced great artists, writers, independent thinkers and speakers,” she added.

“We want to take ownership of the city, which should be known as the cultural capital of the world. The biennale can change the destinies of the city; look how the Venice Biennale changed the economic status of the city in the past,” she said. With 100 reels at the ‘Reel On Hai’ event, the city will definitely be transformed.

Farrukh expressed her hope that two of the city’s well known sons, architect Habib Fida Ali and historian Akbar Naqvi, both deceased, will have a public space or street named after them. Event curator Amin Gulgee said, “Art cannot be elitist, it has to be for the masses”.

Through this event the new generation will witness some personal and political art where as many as 80 Pakistani and 40 international artists will be showcasing their work in eight public spaces across the city, he announced.

“This is the vision for a better tomorrow. The biennale will be a positive gift to the city,” said deputy mayor Arshad Vohra. Frere Hall will be serving as an academy for the youth of the city and the road stretching from Cantt Station to Avari Towers has now been renamed after Sadequain. He hoped to help and assist mayor Wasim Akhtar in naming public spaces after Fida Ali and Naqvi, as Farrukh had requested.

While talking to The Express Tribune, Masuma Halai Khwaja, chair of the Karachi Biennale Trust’s public outreach committee said, “We plan to engage the community via these ‘Reel On Hai’ projects”. She said so far six reels have been placed in various places of the city.

Committee member Nasheed Imran said in the near future as many as 10 reel projects will be done at Absa School. Safari Park will be gifted four reels and Civilisation School in North Nazimabad will be gifted a reel to make a tuck shop by a differently-abled person of the same school.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 29^th, 2017.