KARACHI: The artworks displayed at the Alliance Francaise de Karachi as part of the ongoing Karachi Biennale have a significant, albeit known, thread: flight.

In today’s context, where globalisation has taken over and the entire world is dubbed a global village, the issue of reaching from one place to another has become all the more noteworthy. Ironically, with the kind of sociopolitical events that have been unfolding in the last few decades, displacement has reared its head as a hydra-headed problem.

Ali Kazmi’s big watercolour piece ‘The Conference of the Birds’ (an obvious reference to Fariduddin Attar’s poem) is an intelligent take on the subject. Birds have always been a potent symbol of ‘freedom to move’ and of quest. But it’s the imagined purposelessness of their journeys that has made writers and artists look into their lives with a keen interest.

Kazimi is mindful of the mystical vein of Attar’s poem, which essentially hints at unending search. Hence the birds that he’s made are not directionless. What direction they’re flying in is a query that’s encased in a frame fraught with inconceivable answers.

British artist Alice Kettle’s exhibit ‘Forest’ is even larger than the one discussed above, and the largeness has a reason. It’s the scope of the topic. Her project ‘Thread Bearing Witness’ a couple of years back examined the issue of cultural movement using “textiles as a common language”. For KB19 the artist’s ‘Stitch a Tree’ celebrates “the extraordinary skills of various groups, the distinct styles and stitches of indigenous embroidery. The work valorises and brings together in one artwork the voice of women embroiderers in Pakistan.” To be honest, apart from the message that the artist is trying to convey, it’s the aesthetic grace that she has achieved with the exhibit that has to be acknowledged. One can’t help but look at it from multiple angles.

Sana Arjumand brings the viewer back to birds. However, what’s causing her discomfort is humans’ callousness towards nature that hits us with terrible consequences, one of which is the extinction of precious species. Her grouse is against the pursuit of material gains at the expense of moral dignity. The artist has a point.

Published in Dawn, October 30th, 2019