The 2nd Karachi Biennale 2019 was kicked off on Friday, 26th October 2019 by the city Mayor Waseem Akhtar.
The first Biennale in 2017 was a great success as a large number of artists came from across the country and abroad. Its main functions were held in NJV’ School’s historical building at main M. A. Jinnah Road, but other venues in the old town areas received a lot of visitors from art lovers.
This year’s theme is ‘Flight Interrupted: Eco-leaks from the Invasion Desk’ which invokes the loss of flying bird species, wiped out from the city by the mushrooming of vertical structures that broke their free flight and marginalized life cycles. The theme also focuses on ecology and addresses not only transgressive urbanisation, which causes the un-greening of Karachi with increasing heat waves during summers, but it also shares the global environmental crisis and challenges of climate change.
This year the event is being held at 7 venues, which are divided into 3 Clusters. Cluster 1 comprises Karachi Zoo and VM Gallery; Cluster 1 contains Frere Hall, NED University City Campus and Mahvash and Jahangir Siddiqui Ar at Alliance Francaise (Clifton) and the 3rd Cluster has two venues at Indus Valley School (IVS) Gallery and Bagh Ibne Qasim.
On Sunday, Oct. 27, some personnel of the secret agencies stopped an exhibition of art depicting the extra-judicial killings of 444 people in Karachi by notorious police officer Rao Anwar Ahmed. The KMC Director of Parks thrashed and then stopped a press conference by the organisers of that exhibition including artist Adeela Suleman and social activist Jibran Nasir. Details of the ugly scene are reported in the key newspapers. Further further read, pl. click on this news in Daily Dawn.
The events of Biennale 2019 included Keynotes, Interactive Sessions for Children, Exhibitions, Performances and Tours for School Children. The organisers have developed an App for cell phones which can be downloaded from Google Play for Android users and AppStore for Apple iPhone users for an events guide.
About Karachi Biennale Trust:
The Karachi Biennale Trust (KBT) was founded, in 2016, by a group of visual art professionals and educators as a dynamic platform to promote creativity, innovation and criticality in the visual arts. KBT a not-for-profit organization- has remained a citizens’ initiative supported by the corporate sector. It works closely with a network of local and international cultural, educational and philanthropic organizations.
Karachi Biennale (KB) is the flagship project of the KBT that has been designed to use art as a vehicle to discover, discuss and respond to Karachi. Each iteration has a theme that is relevant to the host city, in 2017, the first KB, artists were invited to respond to the theme ‘WITNESS’.
