Rizq/Risk, the bilingual and homonymous title of the fourth Karachi Biennale (KB24) is a wake-up call. It focuses attention on the threats to living world systems, which bestow rizq (sustenance). Anthropogenic activity is increasingly its own worst enemy and is putting rizq at risk. This global realisation is the pervasive sensibility informing the over-40 artworks included in the biennale.

Curator Waheeda Baloch intended to “spark critical conversations about intricate relationships between food security, environmental sustainability, social justice and cultural heritage.”

These conversations were thematically sub-divided across the five KB24 venues: “Multiple Voices” at the inaugural venue Bagh Ibne Qasim; “Unravelling the Threads” at Sambara Art Gallery; “Our Land. Our Stories” at Frere Hall; “Riverine Resilience” at the NED University City Campus; and “Songs of Sisterhood” at the Alliance Francaise.

Spices, seeds, food imagery, soil and milk tins were among the many edible components of the art installations in Sambara Gallery. Asif Khan’s work was the exception, as it relied entirely on dual video stills.

The Karachi Biennale, spread across five locations and featuring the works of local and international artists, reminds us of the perils facing our planet…

In Once Upon a Landscape, he presented two contrasting scenarios on facing walls, mirroring the Rizq/Risk title. The monumental video stills were aerial views taken with a drone camera. One wall showed Punjabi farmers moving with hypnotic rhythm as they planted rice — the rizq for millions — in a paddy field. On the facing wall, a team with asphalt spreading equipment laid black sludge on the ground. The work underscored the contrast between earth that yields, as opposed to ground that becomes infertile.

Works by Qadir Jhatial and Sadqain (both works shown at NED) relied on very different dynamics to deliver their message. Qadir had transported a fishing boat to Karachi, such as the ones that ply the Indus River around Sukkur. The boat was embedded in fine sand, which had also been trucked from Sukkur.

Many utensils that enable fishermen to live for days on the water, making their boat a home as well as a means of livelihood, embellished the boat. Hand drawings of dead migratory birds were strewn in the sand.

Poignant by their absence (which was the point of the installation) were the fishermen and the critical element of water. The assemblage addressed climate change and the political diversion of river waters that have endangered age-old patterns of subsistence for humans and birds.

In contrast to the physical realism of Qadir’s installation was Sadqain’s highly conceptual work, Water Spill and Nala, in an adjacent room. Long, skinny plexiglass troughs contained coloured fluids in which dye continuously dripped downwards, deepening the liquids. Plaster boards stood in a wall-to-wall trough of dye that soaked upwards into the porous boards.

The colour shifts and stains, and the strong design quality of the installations was as riveting as it was disquieting. Sadqain researches the untreated disposal of textile dyes into water channels that seep into the Ravi River. His artwork played on the duality of purity and contamination.

Farida Batool interrogates gender norms and politics in her art practice. Her sculpture Daaney Pe Likha Hai (Alliance Francaise) used clusters of shiny barbed wire to simulate upright stalks of wheat in a field. Clever lighting threw shadows of the “stalks” on the walls and magnified the scale of the sculpture. This work looked at the role of women in Pakistan and Gaza in the production of food. The destruction caused by war to agricultural and habitable land is being documented every day in news footage of Gaza’s destruction.

Several artists from South America and Europe participated (11 countries in all) in the Biennale through artwork and/or performance. Their presentations underscored global interlinkages of history, colonial legacy, climate change, and unequal access to food and clean resources.

Peruvian artist Eliana Otta Vildoso linked Pakistan and Peru in a quirky sculptural installation (Alliance Francaise). She placed unmatched pairs of farmers’ shoes within several mandala-like shapes that were made from corn seed and herbs. These shapes copied the form of traditional offerings made to earth by Peruvian farmers.

A protest banner on a metal rod was cemented upright from each shoe. The banners depicted agricultural produce common to Peru and Pakistan. The delicate balance of food production, climate change and farmers’ rights was delineated.

Art historian Becca Voelcker from the United Kingdom drew upon rare archives on farming collectives in the 1970s, specifically from Japan and Mali. She constituted her research into a film, Growing Food and Film (Bagh Ibne Qasim), and also placed hard copies of her fascinating essay on the linkage between land and social justice for interested readers to read on site.

An exquisitely conceived installation, titled In Proportions, by Mahreen Zuberi at Frere Hall, interpreted rizq as spiritual sustenance. Mahreen conducted research at the shrine of Abdullah Shah Ghazi. She observed how food offering was part of the process of asking the saint for deliverance.

She translated the holistic experience of sacred space and material offering into abstracted geometrical forms in grey, beaten gold and white. Sugar and gram flour — ingredients in the making of sweets commonly offered to the saint — were incorporated in the installation.

Two prizes were awarded at the KB24 opening. The Emerging Artist Prize went to Anusha Khawajah Shahid for Hawah’s Garden: Threads of Nature. The Juried Prize went to Nadeem Alkarimi of Hunza for his film The Last Act, which accompanied the installation Dismantling Life. Both artworks may be found at Bagh Ibne Qasim.

Climate change, in the form of an oppressive heat wave, accompanied artists, technicians, and visitors across the five venues. Despite that, everyone carried their responsibilities valiantly. The dedication of the student volunteers was noteworthy. They were punctual, polite, well-informed, and wonderful to talk to about the artworks and their own aspirations.

Each participating artist in Rizq/Risk was an advocate for the right to rizq. The artworks are no less than manifestos. They state in their unique ways that the planet deserves our respect.

The Karachi Biennale is open to the public from 27th October – 10th November 2024

The writer is an independent researcher, writer, art critic and curator based in Karachi

Published in Dawn, EOS, November 3rd, 2024