Religion and Urban Motility

Religion, in our theocratic democracy, has become a complex socio-political-spatial phenomenon, so, our responding politics must be complexed too; tackling different pieces of the assemblage and allowing for more continuous flows of (ex)change. This project, Lost & Found in Our Green and White, aims to demonstrate the live, work, play and pray aspects of and for Hindu populations in Karachi: their histories and promises, risks and limits, and intersectionalities with the State. This project is not to submerge art under a political agenda, or to provide data for an eventual analysis. But, it is to create, and recreate, new, alternate or even counter-archives that could offer us another window into the past, and therefore, the future. I want to visualize how religion reflects a vision (flawed, or even failed, as it might be) of identity, memory and social justice in multi-faith societies of Karachi, and how it plays a part in determining the way our larger post-colonial, capitalist public spheres are constructed. This multi-disciplinary public art project should foreground ethnographic and urbanistic research on spatial and cultural appropriation of Hindus – exploring links between Religion, State and Urbanization.

Project Objectives

The power in urban spaces does not all lie in the humans agents of space, as non-human forces aren't passive actants in an urban environment. By focusing on non-human forms in the city, as embodiments of living history in themselves, this project offers to exposes the role that such representations can play in creating exclusionary socio-cultural processes. These include instruments and tools in constitution, health, education, real estate, development sectors etc. like media, newspapers, books, cultural stereotypes, policies, language, names, buildings etc. The varied projects insert themselves in various public spheres within our contested geography and activating new conversations in urban Karachi.

2017 marks 70 years since Indo-Pak partition and independence from Britain. A quick math of an average young adults age, who might have experienced that great migration, together with Pakistan’s life expectancy of 66.4 years, suggests that it is almost already too late to gather this data first hand. Nevertheless, this project hopes to collect data while we can, from those who remember and from those who know, from vivid memories and scavenged artifacts. This deep, and possibly new, understanding of the context in which we live, will allow us to initiate grounded process(es) of inquiry. The collection will construct a viewpoint that is generative, by being critical and analytical, to the live-work-play-pray aspects in the life of Hindus in Karachi, to understand the repercussions of memory, agency and identity, or the lack of it all.

Expand the role of research and design as an agent of social transformation through co-creation and an orchestrated dialogical exchange for a broader public. There can be no isolated solution for this urban undertaking, and so it relies on an inclusive strategy of compiling and spreading the learnt material and values. Tapping various sources of powers at play, this project aims to create a space of thorough learning and critical discussions, for its participants and audience alike, that explores possible forms of knowledge dissemination, collaboration, engagement, representation, and tools within the urban realm. It believes that bringing historical narratives, social practices and cultural forms to the foreground, and available to the public, it will make the situation hard to ignore; foster dialogue and exchange within and among a diverse community of practitioners and multi-faith citizens.

Selected Artists

The following map, filtered by thematic keywords, marks published projects, artists, professionals around some of the same topics. You may find it useful to see these works or their authors.

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