“Manora Field Notes”, the inaugural Pakistan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, is presented by the Pakistan National Council of the Arts and Foundation Art Divvy, whose Director Zahra Khan is curator of the exhibition. Featuring a solo project by Naiza Khan, the Pavilion showcases a new body of work that brings together ideas of embodiment, ecology and optics, focusing on Manora Island, part of a small archipelago off the harbour of Karachi.
Talking to ASIA during the opening of the 58th Venice Biennale in May 2019, curator Zahra Khan revealed that Naiza Khan has been working on Manora Island for the last 12 years, “visiting the island, creating artworks about it, speaking to people there, archiving it, documenting the changes that it’s gone through”. The Pavilion features a completely new body of work, except for three drawings. There are sculptural works, as well as sound and video installations that document changes on Manora Island and beyond it. Zahra explains:
What Naiza found really interesting is the transformation that Manora Island has gone through that she’s documented. Manora is an island off the coast of Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city and most important port at the centre of a large trade network not only today but for many generations before as well.
There is one document hanging on the wall at the back of the first exhibition room that marks the origins of the sculptural installation entitled Hundreds of Birds Killed (2019). The artist found the document on Manora Island, as Zahra Khan reveals:
It’s a weather report from the British times, from 1939, and it lists different cities and natural calamities that struck those cities in that year. The way these sculptures have come out is from that weather report. If you pay attention to the soundscape, the woman talking is reading the weather report, and she’s reading the different cities and the calamities that have struck them. [city, date, calamity and casualties]
These hanging, brass sculptures are of cities taken from the weather report, which today are located across three different countries (Pakistan, India and Bangladesh), but in 1939 were all part of one nation – British India. The artist chose 11 cities, including Lahore, Mymensingh, Amritsar, Jamalpur, Kolkata, Faisalabad, Motihari, Siliguri, Sukkur, Chittagong and Jhansi. Naiza Khan took them out digitally from Google Maps, and then had them laser cut onto plexiglass, and transformed into brass sculptures by artists she had been working with for years in Karachi. “The lines you see are road and railway linkages connecting people and places, because for the artist, these connections are very interesting, even for myself…”, said the curator, continuing to explain:
We were looking at ideas of migration, movement of people, geographical changes and their impact on the environment and the lives of individuals. And that’s why even these objects that you see here come out of the soundscape. You see trees uprooted, she talks about houses swept away, you can see different objects from inside houses forming clusters. The viewer moves through the space, looking at different cities almost like islands, and looking at the impact that these storms have had on the islands themselves. You’ll see a dead shark, for example… it’s very much about environmental change, and natural disasters, and the movement of history and people.
Zahra Khan’s own dissertation at university was about Naiza Khan’s work, and what she found particularly fascinating was how the artist “explores and delves into this land form and land mass that has such an interesting history”. The curator expands:
Manora was first mentioned in the diaries of Alexander the Great’s generals because it was the point they went past when they were going back home. It was then that it came up again overtime, it had an important role. Throughout history there was an important fort on it, and when the British were taking over Sindh, they stormed the fort on Manora Island. Today Manora is lucky in a sense, and we are lucky as Pakistanis because it has a Hindu temple, a Sikh Gurdwara, a mosque, a church. All these religious sites exist in across Pakistan, however it’s very wonderful that in a small tract of land – Manora is tiny – you have all of these religions represented in all of these sites of worships. So Manora is like a microcosm of larger Pakistan. There are also relics of the British Empire, like the old observatory, where she found the document, or the old lighthouse that plays such a prominent role even today.
Zahra tells us that at this time, Manora is “a very rare public beach, in that it is hidden, and very few people from Karachi and from the mainland go to it”, as she explains:
Regular, local individuals spend most of their time on Manora Island, as you can see in the videos, children playing with their family, friends, people looking through the telescope, it’s turning into an interesting tourist attraction, and in 2007 Naiza spoke about this as well, the government was trying to transform Manora, to make it into a more high class and develop it further. Fortunately, and maybe unfortunately, those plans fell through and now on the island you have this interesting juxtaposition of buildings marked for demolition, and yet you have this thriving tourist industry, people living there, going on with their lives despite the sad state of affairs that you have. This video for example, is a walkthrough of the artist through the island. It really tells what the island is like.
Zahra wanted to give an immersive experience to exhibition viewers, to show them Manora Island through the artist’s own eyes. And here come in the video works, and the telescope she mentions that gives a “walkthrough of the artist through the island”:
The telescope is a linking factor throughout the exhibition. I told Naiza that I really wanted the viewer to see the island through her eyes. The main representative image at the entrance is of people looking through the telescope, and this goes very well with the Biennale’s main theme of “May You Live in Interesting Times”, which considers the artist as a medium or a mediator through which the viewer can see a social reality or the artist’s truth as well. So we had the telescope brought over from Manora Beach, and you can see through it into a parallel reality that is very different from where you are standing now. It’s the island’s actual spatial field that you see.
Asked about how she chose Naiza Khan to exhibit in Venice, Zahra tells us that the first thing that struck her in Naiza’s work was the similarities between Manora and Karachi, also the curator’s own hometown, and the intricacy as well as the rich and clever research of Naiza’s work. She also saw strong parallels between Karachi and Venice, “in their history as important points on trade routes, and travellers from Venice would make their way into Pakistan and India frequently”, she explains:
… so I thought it would be very interesting for people who visit the Biennale to have a window onto Manora Island and see something entirely different. And also a lot of Pakistanis actually have not visited Manora Island. So here you really see it through the eyes of someone who knows it well, has relationships with the people who live there. It’s a very basic, broad view into a space.
Khan also sustains that it is important to showcase solo presentations in important international art events such as the Venice Biennale, as it is an opportunity like no other for single voices to be heard and to take ownership of their exhibition, without dissolving its impact by presenting too many voices together. Solo presentations amplify the reach of an artist, and can show the diversity of an art scene at the Biennale, with different presentations throughout the years. Khan explains that one single artist cannot represent all of Pakistan and that is not what they are doing here in Venice. Rather, it is just showing one little, shining star in a much larger firmament waiting to be explored:
I hope that in the coming editions there will be other solo presentations by artists of Naiza’s caliber, so as not to dilute the message. I wanted Naiza to really take ownership of the show and the perspective she presents. With a group show, sometimes the artist doesn’t have the opportunity to take ownership of the pavilion. This is an opportunity for artists to really push themselves, create new work for a space and put forth a particular creation.
Khan concludes:
This exhibition is not an attempt to showcase all of Pakistan or even showcase Pakistan’s art scene, because it’s so diverse and dynamic, it’s really about specifying a particular locality seen through the eyes of a very particular artist, whose done research on this island and and using that as a jumping off point or a vantage point to look across the global south, understanding the region a little bit better.
C. A. Xuân Mai Ardia
“Manora Field Notes” by Naiza Khan, the Pakistan Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale, is on view from 7 May to 24 November 2019.