Returning a Stranger

Over the past 10 years, Gasworks (U.K) and Vasl have exchanged Pakistani and British artists for residencies under the Triangle Network umbrella enabling cultural dialogue through the contemporary arts. In 2017, Gasworks and Vasl selected Swedish/British artist, Ester Svennson for the International Artists’ Residency funded by The Arts Council England.

For the duration of 5 weeks, Ester was hosted by Vasl in Karachi where she visited the chemical markets and bazaars to experiment with local materials available for creating her ceramic pieces. Her interests lied in the vast and ever increasing number of immigrants who come to Karachi for economic opportunity. With previous bodies of work focusing on refugees in the European Union and understanding the search for a space to call one’s own, Ester extended her interest during this residency by looking into the local aesthetics of homes in Karachi and the domestic lifestyle. During her research, Ester visited the National Museum of Pakistan to view the relics of the Indus Valley civilization which dates back almost 3000 BCE. Ester also visited the Citizens Archive of Pakistan to gather images, visuals and audio testaments of migratory families from 1947 after the Subcontinent division as well as information on refugees from Afghanistan after the Afghan-Russian war in the 1980s.

As part of Vasl’s educational outreach programs which are integral components for international residencies, Ester designed a one day workshop at the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) Centre for 30 school going children from Orangi Town. After an audio visual slideshow on various types of ceramic works, she asked the students to think about their own home and to mould clay pieces which depict aspects of their home in both overt and abstract ways. The workshop concluded with each child speaking about their piece and an interactive question and answer session about all the clay works created.

Vasl collaborated closely with the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture (IVS) for this residency as the ceramics department and Associate Professor Sadia Salim assisted Ester in outsourcing local material and provided the resident artist with all studio facilities. While working alongside the ceramic students in the studio, Ester gave a talk about her previous bodies of work and provided the students with feedback on their individual projects while attending to her own artwork at the university campus.