Over the past few decades, a systematic depoliticisation of the art community has taken place in Pakistan. The primary site has been the art school, where this process begins early on in the education and training of young artists. Despite nostalgic valorisations from those who run our art institutions today of an anti-military student activist movement emerging from art schools in the Zia era, the present circumstances betray a complete and systematic severing of the art world from society and politics.

The art scene in Pakistan is unique in the extent to which artists and art practitioners are embedded in the art schools. The space of the art school has become the primary site for the growth, development and circulation of art production in Pakistan. The death of any critical discourse and progressive politics in contemporary art in Pakistan is a direct result of the de-politicisation of the art school, enacted and sustained through the discouraging / banning of student politics, the infantilisation of our students and the barricading of the art school from the larger social context.

There is an urgency to re-examine our art institutions — its power structures, repressive mechanisms and socio-cultural hegemonies — and imagine alternate models of pedagogy that encourage political thinking and practice. The Karachi Art Anti-University was formed this summer in an attempt to decolonise and politicise art education. It is an experiment in radical anti-institutional art pedagogy that creates a democratic space for the challenging, unlearning, and subversion of institutional pedagogies. The Anti-University is situated at the intersections of art and politics, in the tradition of decolonial art movements from the global South, on our desires to imagine and build new (art) worlds, to speak truth to power and to build a progressive art community.

For more information you can visit www.facebook.com/khiartantiuniversity or email khiartantiuniversity@gmail.com.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, August 2nd, 2015

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