THE UNFORGETTABLE EXHIBIT

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2019/11/02/the-unforgettable-exhibit/

• How a political statement got amplified

What is art?

Prehistoric art during the Neolithic age was a commentary on the life of the time, the progress of man, his achievements and his setbacks. Man was new to his implements and materials but use them he did to depict the life around him, the animals he encountered, as a warning to other hunters, an observation of the terrain. It revealed his flights of fancy, his deepest wishes; it was a reaching for the stars, a lament following war. If the artist observed a tiger stalking a deer, he drew it, he molded stones in the shape of the weight on his heart and made fledgling efforts at portraits of warriors, headmen, and tribesmen. This after all was the politics of the time. In addition those artists made lines and dabbed on paint just for the heck of it too.

It carried on. David’s statue in Florence, a symbol of the defense of civil liberties embodied by the Republic of Florence, a city-state threatened by rivals and by the all-powerful Medici family; Catalano’s statue about the heartache of migration, this is what artists aspire to, to create a spur to thought, to produce the kindling that fires imagination, to present a message encapsulated by skill and imagination. This is the real thing of beauty that is a joy forever.

Human rights supporters stood each stone up again and lay down behind each one, representing the body in each grave. What a superb response. We will remember Suleman’s exhibit which otherwise we would have appreciated very much but would have forgotten in time, but now this exhibit will remain in our minds. Because it became such a powerful commentary on the times we live in. This is something that is beyond the capacity of ‘Intel Agencies’ to understand, that censorship eventually rebounds on the censors.

The Karachi Biennale 2019 recently held its annual event at the Frere Hall. What is the Karachi Biennale? It is the flagship project undertaken by the Karachi Biennale Trust designed to use art as a vehicle to discover, discuss and respond to Karachi.

The exhibition this year included a work by the artist Adeela Suleman. It consisted of 444 grave markers, each depicting a person murdered by Rao Anwar of Karachi, now the former SSP of Malir. As Jibran Nasir pointed out, the murders are not disputed, they are on police record. The SSP was later also indicted for the murder of Naqeebullah Mehsud, a young aspiring model who Anwar claimed was a member of the TTP. Give us a break.

Part of the exhibit at Frere Hall was also a video installation with images of Mehsud’s father and the place where he was killed.

Unidentified persons raided this Karachi Biennale 2019 display at the Frere Hall. They toppled over each stone representing each grave marker thus destroying Adeela Suleman’s exhibit, and sealed off the lower hall.

So, who were these people? Which ‘Intel Agency’ were they from with enough power enabling them to arrive in trucks and threaten the staff of Frere Hall, disrupt Jibran Nasir’s press conference, throw away the medias’ mikes and prevent them from going on air? The fact that the organisers of the Biennale issued a statement afterwards in which they refused to support Suleman and said that her exhibit was against the ethos of the event and would create ‘false divisions’ between art, the public and society suggests that the organisers too perhaps were muzzled by the ‘Agency’. After all each exhibit must have been vetted and given approval before the event.

Were these self-appointed censors expecting pieces of art utterly devoid of commentary on the surroundings in which people live? Did they want or expect just lines and dabs of paint, paintings of voluptuous beauties and monuments in praise of our rulers, statues of figures from our apparently glorious past, or a collage of the achievements of Pakistan? Of course, with Malala conspicuously missing, and Abdus Salam blacked out.

This incident gives rise to many questions, but also whether art should foster political debate in a society.

That depends on what the definition of politics is. If it is the expression of the will of the people, their concerns and the issues they face, then Suleman’s exhibit is right up that alley.

If on the other hand those in power in Pakistan define politics (only to themselves of course) as a vehicle for the power the government holds over the governed, then what followed the destruction of Suleman’s exhibit was an even more powerful commentary than the commentary that was destroyed, and its censors failed abysmally in their attempts to hush it up. And what followed is this:

Human rights supporters stood each stone up again and lay down behind each one, representing the body in each grave.

What a superb response.

We will remember Suleman’s exhibit which otherwise we would have appreciated very much but would have forgotten in time, but now this exhibit will remain in our minds. Because it became such a powerful commentary on the times we live in.

This is something that is beyond the capacity of ‘Intel Agencies’ to understand, that censorship eventually rebounds on the censors.

How many people read Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses before it was banned? How many read it afterwards?