KARACHI: They are the anonymous soldiers of the Subversive Operations Services — the relevance of its acronym is not lost on anyone — and they are armed with spray paint cans. SOS is a loosely cobbled together group of conscientious citizens who have come together to register their protest against the emergency. On Wednesday they chose graffiti as their medium of expression and went to different parts of Karachi to mark their protest.
So far, you will find their work in the vicinity of Abdullah Shah Ghazi mazaar (a favourite place of graffiti artists over the years), Khadda market, Gizri market and around Khayaban-i-Ittehad. Blink and you may miss it today but if more artists get involved, the city’s walls — and they hope the country’s — will become a canvas of expressions. This is not news for city walls have long been used to advertise products and services, not to mention political slogans.
What is different, however, is the energy behind this exercise. The coming together of the young and old, the hopeful and the cynics, the artists and “regular folks” has brought forth a whole slew of new ideas, one of which is resistance graffiti. On Wednesday a small group met and took along copies of two stencils, made by a young talented artist, which they later went and sprayed the town with — well certain parts of town at least. Something’s got to start, somewhere.
For those curious about what the symbols actually are, ie the non-artists among us: the eject symbol in red is pretty self-explanatory (eject the emergency) while the black loop signifies the rut the country is stuck in.
These resistance artists hope to create a ripple effect whereby others will join in and use all kinds of canvases to express themselves.
KARACHI: They are the anonymous soldiers of the Subversive Operations Services — the relevance of its acronym is not lost on anyone — and they are armed with spray paint cans. SOS is a loosely cobbled together group of conscientious citizens who have come together to register their protest against the emergency. On Wednesday they chose graffiti as their medium of expression and went to different parts of Karachi to mark their protest.
