The 3rd annual Taaza Tareen Residency brought together artists Ayesha Sultana, Irfan Hassan, Iqra Tanveer, Rabbya Naseer, Raju G.C. and Sohail Abdullah for a month long residency. The artists created a dialogue through their work, emanating from various inspirations, individual perspectives of the environment that surrounded them and with peer to peer discourse. 

Ayesha Sultana, an artist from Bangladesh, produced work during the residency that focused on the cityscape. In her drawings and photography, she used symbolic patterns from the unceasing mobile culture as her visual reference.

Iqra Tanveer’s work challenged and explored the alternative ways of sounds and touch. “I feel that the sense of touch is what binds everyone, irrespective of any dis-functionality. I realized this in my experience at ABSA (school for deaf and mute children) during the residency.” Tanveer was fascinated by the communication skills of the visually impaired children, which became a driving force in her work. She produced ‘voice boxes’, which instead of an auditory sense, could only be comprehended through touch.

Sohail Abdullah, a local resident artist, thought it to be a challenging task to look at one’s home surroundings with the same sense of wonder as one would look at a new place. “It is difficult to find good reason to record something one passes by every day.” He took black and white photos of old buildings in Karachi, which he enlarged with a vintage feel, but included obvious elements that contradicted this appearance.