Zahra Malkani (b. 1986) & Shahana Rajani (b. 1987) are an artist duo based in Karachi, Pakistan exploring the politics of infrastructure and development in the rapidly transforming city. Malkani and Rajani are also co-founders of the Karachi LaJamia, an anti-institution seeking to politicise art education and explore new radical pedagogies and art practices.
Abeera Kamran (b. 1987) is a visual designer and a web-developer based in Birmingham and Karachi. Her creative practice is research-based and lies at the intersections of design, archiving practices and the internet. In collaboration with Zahra Malkani and Shahana Rajani, she designs and publishes Exhausted Geographies, a publication which critically engages with the politics of representation and map-making. She co-curated an exhibition in November 2017 at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery called 'The Past is Now: Birmingham and The British Empire' which interrogates Birmingham's relationship with the British Empire and attempts to decolonise some of the museum's colonial collection.
Zahra Malkani and Shahana Rajani
Jinnah Avenue
2018
Video, 6:20 min.
Jinnah Avenue is part of a body of work that engages with emerging landscapes at the intersection of infrastructure, war and ecological crisis in Karachi. These neo-colonial transformations, influenced by transnational networks of power, finance, and capital, are entangled with the military apparatus and take place in spaces of constructed invisibility. We look at the ways in which militarisation and development manifest upon and transform land, and are sustained through environmental violence in the name of the nation-state. This video draws on collective research undertaken for the Gadap Sessions – a course organized by Karachi LaJamia in collaboration with the Karachi Indigenous Rights Alliance in 2016. The Gadap Sessions set out to study and document the historical township of Gadap at the outskirts of Karachi in light of contemporary processes of development, displacement and climate change.
This video was made with the generous support of the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.
Zahra Malkani & Shahana Rajani with Abeera Kamran
Exhausted Geographies II
publication
2018
Exhausted Geographies II engages with landscapes at the intersection of infrastructure, war and ecological crisis in Karachi. We map the city through a new road named Jinnah Avenue, through the rusting remnants of railways, in the debris of what was once a mountain, in disappearing bodies of water, and against the ubiquitous borders proliferating across its landscape. These neo-colonial transformations, influenced by transnational networks of power, finance, and capital, are entangled with the military apparatus and take place in spaces of constructed invisibility. We look at the ways in which war and development manifest in these invisible landscapes and are sustained through environmental violence in the name of the nation-state.
Reading the city through emergent and decaying infrastructures, disappearing ecologies, and architectures of militarisation, this collection of texts and images draws on collective research undertaken for the Gadap Sessions – a course organized by Karachi LaJamia in collaboration with the Karachi indigenous Rights Alliance in 2016. The Gadap Sessions set out to study and document the historical township of Gadap at the outskirts of Karachi in light of contemporary processes of development, displacement and climate change.
This publication has been made possible with the generous support of the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.
