13 Satellites of Lahore II

 MEHVISH KHALID Lahore, IQRA TANWEER Karachi, NIDA BANGASH Lahore, RABBYA KHAN Lahore, MEHREEN MURTAZA Lahore, SAJJAD AHMED Lahore, EHSAN UL HAQ Lahore, SARAH RASHEED Karachi, ZIKRA BALUCH Lahore, MUZZAMIL RUHEEL Lahore, ASIF KHAN Lahore, ZEEST MALIK Lahore,  FIZZA LIAQUAT Lahore, AYESHA JATOI Lahore, AHMED AZMI Maldives, HURMAT UL AIN Lahore, HASSAN MUJTABA Lahore,  SAMIA MEHDI Lahore, RABIA TARIQ Lahore, AAREZ ALI Lahore, RIZWAN ABBAS Lahore, SOPHIA MAIRAJ Karachi, ASIM BUTT Karachi

April 2nd to 10th 2007

AHMED AZMEE

A Free Degree

After living for three years in Pakistan, I realized that there are a lot of people who wanted to study but were unable to do so. I decided to make a college degree a part of their lives. I made a silhouette of a graduate receiving a degree, went around the city, where people could volunteer to have a photograph taken, with their heads replacing the empty space in the silhouette.

IQRA TANWEER

Public art?

An effort to unveil and understand what public art really is. Is public art exactly what the term refers to? Is it a form of art the engages with public space and is accessible to the general public? Does it communicate with all who encounter it?

"we are here to SERVE the nation" by Rizwan Abbas, Aarez Ali,

Rabia Tariq and Hassan Mujtaba

 EHSAN UL HAQ

Mistake in the sky

ASIM BUTT

'Jharra’s Akharra' by Asim offers a patchwork of spaces where the sacred and profane sit cheek by jowl. The project challenged the Dadaist stranglehold over public art intervention, while also turning a potentially passive audience into its models and friends.

RABBYA NASEER and HURMAT-UL-AIN 

Yeh lo

The folds of their Shalwaars flash Yeh lo, masculinity in public spaces, right in our faces. We decided to throw it back.

AYESHA JATOI

Isn’t this beautiful?

By using the vocabulary of the streets, i.e. hand painted signs on aluminum boards, I tried to draw attention to those who work/perform on the streets  to create fanciful and functional installations, be they unconsciously made or communally contributed to, but which display a poignant visual intelligence.

SAHAR RASHID

Fruits and vegetables spread across cities, quickly distributed, consumed. I attempt to disseminate my idea similarly, tracing it through the city, and mapping its trajectory.

Art for the sake of people

'13 Satellites of Lahore', a collection of art pieces displayed at Annemarie Schimmel Haus, Lahore celebrates the idea of public space and interaction with ordinary people

By Quddus Mirza

We are living in quaint times. Strange things are happening in the political realm. Pent up emotions, issues and frustrations have come out. These images have now been seen so often that they have lost the element of oddity or mystery.

In a situation where the national affairs are being settled in the public sphere, the concept of public art holds a special significance. Initially art had been part of the public domain, whether it was a mural in the church, statue in a square or sacred text carved in the mosque. But with the rise of modernism, art was seen and practiced as an exclusive activity, mainly for a select audience, which enjoys, understands and appreciates and even collects it.

This has denied art its heroic role of being an activity shared by a large milieu and now majority of artists perceive their own practice as no more than manufacturing domestic items in order to please the customers.

In the contemporary world, we have two kinds of public spaces. One, in its physical and orthodox sense, is the area which lies outside the house and the private gallery; and the other exists as virtual reality -- on the TV, Internet and other forms of media. In that sense the older concept of public space and its distinction from private space is not applicable any more. Now the screen of a monitor -- of either a TV set or computer -- can present and encompass enormous space. Therefore the previous notion of breaking the confinements of private spaces and moving out into public area, needs to be reconsidered, since an idea or image transmitted through the media reaches a wider public than an actual work placed in open space.

Yet for some artists, the traditional segregation of public and private spaces still holds relevance. For them the concept of public space is sacred since it provides an occasion to move away from the tyranny of market that manifests itself in the form of private galleries, limited viewers and privileged connoisseurs. In contrast to that, a work conceived and created in the public arena is meant to have a direct connection with the general public (even though the general likes to keep himself away and distinct from the public!). Thus the subject, medium, technique and scale of the public works may differ from conventional paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints suited for a gallery or a private house.

This approach was visible in the project called '13 Satellites of Lahore' that took place recently in the city. Its 20 participants (from two art institutions in Karachi and two in Lahore) worked in the city. The documentation and some samples of their works were displayed for one day on April 10 at the Annemarie Schimmel Haus in Lahore. The location of these participants' works varied from the Mall Road, Jain Mandir, Fruit Market, to the wrestlers ring in Urdu Bazaar, and other parts of the town.

The exhibition consisted of videos, prints and photographs of the works scattered at various sites. These works, apart from being outside the private spaces, dealt with different ideas that ranged from religious, political, social and aesthetic issues. Among these works, a few pieces appeared to be addressing the question of public participation in the act of making and viewing art, while others focused on gender and some were related to local customs and traditions.

A number of these works highlighted immediate political problems, whereas several others concentrated on the secret history of our desires.

Still all of these operated on one presumption -- that artists must approach public space in order to include and interact with ordinary people, who are not the normal audience or usual consumers of 'high art'. Therefore in majority of these works, the yearning to communicate -- rather bringing art to the uninitiated -- was apparent. This was visible in the works by Ayesha Jatoi, Hurmat ul Ain and Rabia Tariq. A few other artists tried to intervene in the public space through small gestures, for instance Sahar Rashid stuck telephone numbers on fruits, on which people could call, and Ahmed Azmi constructed cut outs of a graduating couple, in which people could get themselves photographed.

The politically oriented works -- probably by their nature or due to the 'necessity' of public art -- were the most obvious pieces in the whole project. Nida Bangash wrote lines of political text on a section of Mall Road and a group of participants acted as democrats and dictators in a restaurant. However in comparison to these loud but ironically not successfully communicated -- since the politically loaded lines were perceived as the obsession of a mad man by a newspaper reporter -- pieces, the calligraphy/graffiti work of Muzzamil Raheel was poignant in its meanings and form. Inspired from the usual wall chalkings, which start with the words 'chalo, chalo' and invite public to some rally or demonstration, he wrote the word 'chalo' in a sequence on the wall, without indicating the destiny. That was an apt comment upon the directionless nature of our political parties.

Probably apart from Muzzamil's works, majority of works in the '13 satellite' project revealed our artists' assumption of being part of the public; however one needs to examine the real effect or impact of their endeavours in the public sphere.

As in most cases, being in public does not elevate a practitioner from the shackles of art system. The allure of the art world pulls him back, and his attempt to intervene in the public space turns into a way of 'using' it for a different kind of aesthetic -- that is still viable, meaningful and catered for the limited art audience. Therefore, the display at the Annemarie Schimmel Haus did not seem to be the documentation or presentation of pieces, it became an exhibition of art works by itself.

Perhaps that hidden danger in the fanciful engagement with public art was unearthed by another participant, Iqra Tanweer. In her video piece, she placed herself at the four sites of this public art project and recited a line in Urdu that meant, 'Public art is a form of art that considering the public space, makes it possible that art reaches to public', in a loop. The continuity of her recitation was a way of challenging the relevance of public art and the belief in its link to ordinary persons. In fact the repeated proclamation of the line was a comment upon the rest of the works from '13 Satellite', which tried to reach to public, yet revolved around our tiny art world. 

The News Article Link

http://jang.com.pk/thenews/apr2007-weekly/nos-22-04-2007/enc.htm#2