Vasl’s 10th ‘Taaza Tareen Residency’ concluded recently in Karachi, carrying on with its commendable tradition of fostering emerging art practitioners to engage and experiment with their practice through a residency programme. This year, the four participating artists worked under the theme of ‘Bijli, Pani Aur Gas’, a relevant lens to explore relationships in the city through contemporary concerns. Seemingly an ironic nod to the erstwhile leftist Pakistan Peoples Party’s slogan ‘Roti, kapra aur makaan’, this theme unpacks ways in which contemporary anxieties and productivity is linked with access to important civic resources.

Mujtaba Asif’s work was strongly and most successfully aligned with these ideas and showed the beginnings of a substantial research-based practice. During the residency, the artist — a native of the city and a graduate of Karachi University — expanded upon his interaction with residents in the city and the different communities that he visited and interacted with. In his statement he said, “I realised the concrete facts of the disparate distribution of power and authority between the privileged and the common man.” In this way, the artist utilises the media available for the distribution of these services — water tankers, pumps and electricity sensors — to cartographically plot a journey through Karachi, interspersed with poetry and materiality, in order to talk about ways in which the urban experience is shaped through these factors.

The practices of other artists seemed to be more open-ended. Sabeen Ahsan specifically looked at the condition of water in the city, specially by exploring the sea and the way in which this resource affects the life of its inhabitants and is impacted by their activities. Over time, due to increasing population and industrialisation, this resource has become polluted through sewage and waste water. Her works — created in gouache on carbon paper and acrylic sheets — commented on this reality. The resultant pieces were abstract splotches in variations of black and blue on the surface of her medium as they seemed to evoke the condition of a sandy beach destroyed through an oil spill.

Vasl Residency continues its tradition of showcasing emerging talents. This time round, the theme is ‘Bijli, Paani Aur Gas’

Rahman Zada continued with his practice in the miniature tradition, expanding upon his thesis exhibition and exploring forms of connections made between living beings through the presence of technology.

Maryam Arsalan commented on the relationship of food with Bijli, Pani Aur Gas. Her work seemed to be focused more on object-making than research or expansion.

In this regard, questions for a viewer or a commentator may emerge on the viability of themes around residencies — especially for artists who are very young. For example, Rahman Zada is a very recent graduate of the National College of Arts (NCA), and his work did not seem to have evolved further from his own thesis exhibition. While conclusions cannot be drawn for any artist and one must continue to think of practice as a process, it may be that stronger relationships between the artists and themes with the aim of building a community may allow for less disparity and more focus. There are no answers to these questions apart from a continued interaction with these practices and important residency programmes as they evolve and adapt to new realities.

“Bijli, Paani Aur Gas” took place at TDF Ghar from April 7 to April 15, 2018

Published in Dawn, EOS, May 6th, 2018