The Karachi Biennale Trust (KBT) recently named New Media artist Faisal Anwar as the curator for its third iteration, to be hosted in 2022. Anwar is based in Oakville, Ontario (Canada), and proposes to bring a fresh perspective to the viewing of art in Karachi and to its interface with local and international audiences.

Art biennales are mega events held every two years, where artists are invited to showcase their art in public spaces, as opposed to museums and galleries. Karachi cannot boast of a museum of art but it has long been the centre from where most established artists have launched their career. Besides, it remains the commercial hub for art from Pakistan.

However, the scale of a biennale, a contemporary take on a national exhibition, proposes to cultivate audiences that are inclusive of the city’s diverse communities. With over 300 cities worldwide hosting biennales, this is a growing trend, reflecting urgency in the way cities want to (re)present themselves in the global arena.

The curator or a team of curators are entrusted to develop a theme for each edition. The KBT’s selection of Anwar is in line with their previous editions, in inviting an artist as curator. He brings a broader lens to the local dynamics due to his location in Canada.

Anwar graduated from the National College of Arts, Lahore (1996), before moving to Toronto for his post-grad residencies at the Canadian Film Centre and the Banff New Media Institute and other institutions. He is connected to the artistic communities in Karachi and in Lahore. More interestingly, his New Media installation ‘I See My Streets’ was part of the Karachi Biennale 2017 (KB17) and it initiated dialogue across many communities in Karachi.

Faisal Anwar, the curator of KB22, hopes to bridge the gap between artists, information and the community

‘I See My Streets’ is a relevant example how the artist would engage with communities. Anwar explains, “How I see the biennale model, in the context of Pakistan’s most diverse city, is as a cultural producer, sharing common questions, themes and the common challenges of the city and its people. It is a commitment to advance the conversation on contemporary art and the voice of the artists.”

He says that, since the works are presented in the public sphere, they are bound to provoke discussions about the very purpose and function of art and its impact. “What is a public space in the present context?” he asks. “As the world has completely shifted to new realities since Covid-19, it is fair to imagine that how art is perceived, created and viewed has shifted too. So I see it as an opportunity to have engaging dialogue that is a reflection of these shifts.”

Viewing Karachi as a melting pot of cultures and migrants, ‘I See My Streets’ was developed by engaging the youth from Korangi, Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Orangi, Landhi, etc, in a workshop process, to re-imagine the streets of their city, through a digital pictorial mapping process. They documented the architectural design and environs in walking tours on phone cameras. Something like 15,000 images were recorded and projected with sound in a loop, on to a vinyl cube at the Frere Hall Gallery. Anwar feels that the youth is an “untainted reflection of the city” and its future.

In 2019, Anwar was awarded the Labverde Residency at the Amazon rainforest to research scientific climate data. The project, ‘Seek’, created dynamically forming bird flocking, based on archived and real-time data. Through it scientists will be able to see their data through the artists’ visualisation of it. (Data is presented in many imaginative and visually challenging ways in order to draw in the viewer.) They will, hopefully, ask new questions and predict future impacts of the environment’, says Anwar. “For a gallery and museum audience, it allows them to understand the impact of integrated ecology on earth and how they can contribute to making a difference on climate. It was a time-based experience that puts information into concrete action, to make its impact visible and set the course for a positive future.” 

For the artist/curator, this creates new methods of dissemination of information into storytelling, while bridging art with science, technology and nature. Another of his collaborations-in-process, ‘Element’, brings technologists, designers, psychologists and healthcare experts into a hospital environment. These data sets will imaginatively engage the staff, patients and visitors.

In Anwar’s ‘Chahar Bagh’ at Toronto’s Aga Khan Museum, visitors’ tweets were digitally converted into flowers and screened on to the building façade, transforming it into a four-part Mughal garden, reflected on to ponds.

Anwar believes that cell phone usage is wide and digital forums such as Tik Tok, Facebook and Instagram are gaining popularity among the youth to express themselves. He visualises this growing trend among some of the ways to include the larger community in conversations on social and environmental issues, empowering the artist and his community through collaborative projects. With Anwar’s passion for the digital and the cross disciplinary, hopefully he will find the poetry that will help us as viewers, to re-imagine Karachi as well.

Published in Dawn, EOS, March 7th, 2021