Editor: Maham Khurshid Editorial Board: Sumbul Khan Editor: Maham Khurshid Editorial Board: Sumbul Khan Kafka in the woods Zehra Nabi Zehra Nabi is a writer based in Karachi. She earned her MFA from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, where she also taught creative writing and served as Assistant Editor at The Hopkins Review. Her non-fiction and fiction writings have appeared in Dawn, Newsline, Herald, The Express Tribune, Subtropics, Glimmer Train, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of two All Pakistan Newspapers Society awards for her investigative features published in Newsline. She presently teaches courses on literature, film studies, and academic writing at the Institute of Business Administration, Karachi, and the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture (IVS), Karachi. The Potato, the Mark, and the Body Usman Ansari Usman Ansari has an M.Arch from Tulane University, New Orleans. He has practised in the fields of urban planning, architecture, and interior design at Gensler and at Meinhardt in San Francisco, and at TAQ Associates Pvt. Ltd. in Karachi. Usman is avidly involved in the visual and performing arts as an art director, scriptwriter, and painter. His art has been featured in the international web series Churails and he has produced commissioned work for private collectors and corporate clients. His first solo show titled Unsung opened in Karachi in 2021. He currently heads the Department of Interior Design at IVS. The Self Within the Collective Sarah Ahmed and Arooj Aurangzeb Sarah Ahmed is an Assistant Professor of Health Sciences and Women’s and Gender Studies at Providence College, Providence. Her research lies at the intersection of global health, gender and development, and has been published in Gender and Society, PLOSOne, and SSMPopulation Health. Her current book project examines the structural and cultural dimensions of an internationally funded healthcare initiative — the Global Polio Eradication initiative — through the everyday lives of female health workers in South Punjab, Pakistan. Arooj Aurangzeb is a socialist political organiser and a Punjabi street theatre artist based in Lahore. She is a strong advocate for the restoration of student unions in Pakistan. Arooj’s interests include pedagogy of alternate learning, anthropology of revolution, performative politics, and culture of protest. She is currently working as a Research Assistant on a project called ‘Partition of Identity’. Mapping Sacred Games Priya Pinjani Perwani Priya Pinjani is an architect, designer, and urban thinker. She has an MSc in Design and Urban Ecologies from Parsons, The New School of Design, New York, where she was a Fulbright Scholar, and a B.Arch from IVS. Her key interests are the politics of space, right to the city, critical urbanism, and an expanded field of design. She has contributed to projects exhibited at the Pakistan Pavilion at the Dubai Expo 2020; the Pavilion of Pakistan at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale; the National History Museum, Lahore; and in the web series Churails. 132 She has previously taught at Habib University, Karachi, and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture at IVS. Narrative Images: Women’s Selfies, History, and Storytelling Noor Butt Noor Butt is an artist, writer, and educator. She has an MA in History of Art from Birkbeck College, University of London, London, and a BFA from IVS. Her research interests and creative practice focus on archival history, gender, and image-making in the digital age. Her professional portfolio includes projects with Koel Gallery, O Art Space, ArtNow Pakistan, the Karachi Biennale Trust, Vasl Artists’ Association, and the Karachi Collective. Currently, she holds a hybrid position at IVS, where she is Programme Officer in the Graduate Programme and teaches art history courses in the Liberal Arts Programme. Spirit of the Sarangi Zehra Jabeen Shah Zehra Jabeen Shah is a poet, writer, and oral historian based in Karachi. For the last four years, she has been learning to play the sarangi, under the mentorship of Gul Muhammad of Hoshiyarpur gharana. She is currently working on a project that traces the sound of the folk sarangi in interior Sindh and Tharparkar, with a focus on women in music. She is also a faculty member at Habib University, Karachi, where she teaches literature and writing. You can find her on Twitter/Instagram: @zehrajabeenshah Shared Spaces Shamama Hasany Shamama Hasany is a multidisciplinary artist based in Karachi. She received her BFA from the National College of Arts, Lahore. Her practice explores themes of intimacy, memory, and the self through the mediums of painting, drawing, photography, and text. She has exhibited her work in Karachi and is currently pursuing her M.Phil in Art and Design at IVS.
Maham Khurshid
Faiza Mushtaq
Maham Khurshid
Faiza Mushtaq
Volume: 04 | Risk Editor: Faiza Mushtaq Editorial Board: Asad Alvi Editorial Note Dreaming Futures: The Risks and Rewards of South Asian Futurisms Nudrat Kamal Nudrat Kamal is Lecturer of Comparative Literature at the Institute of Business Administration, Karachi. She has an MA in Comparative Literature from Stony Brook University, New York, which she attended as a Fulbright scholar. Her research focuses on literature exploring the South Asian Partition, as well as in the intersections of gender, postcolonial theory, and science fiction and fantasy. Most recently, her chapter “The Postcolonial Cyborg in Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome” was published in Palgrave Macmillan’s Ethical Futures and Global Science Fiction. She writes on literature, film and television, and culture for various publications such as Dawn, Newsline and The Express Tribune. Karachi is Hard to Love Gulraiz Khan Gulraiz Khan is a design researcher and strategist, working at the intersection of design, urbanism and finance. He currently heads Customer Experience & Design at United Bank Ltd. He is also a Teaching Lead for IDEO U. Previously, he taught design at Habib University and co-founded the playground, Habib's center for transdisciplinarity, design and innovation. He received his MFA in Transdisciplinary Design from The New School's Parsons School of Design. Richard Pryor in Black and Blue Palvashay Sethi Palvashay Sethi is a student, writer, and teacher. Her fiction has appeared in minorliterature[s], Barrelhouse, The Aleph Review, Severine, Queen Mob’s Tea House, and FishFood Magazine. She has a Masters in Literature and Modernity from the University of Edinburgh, and is completing an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University. You can find her on Twitter as @Palvashits. Imagined Utopias: Art as a Social Practice Manjiri Dube is a part of the Curatorial & Programs Team at Khoj International Artists’ Association and is leading Peripheries & Crossovers. At Khoj she has also executed the Food Residency Ed. (III), the Curatorial Intensive South Asia 2021, and managed We Are Ours: A Collection of Manifestos for the Instant (Himali Singh Soin), Deep Time (Rohini Devasher), Residual (Anpu Varkey) and Word. Sound. Power. Manjiri has a Masters in International Relations from the University of Warwick, and has worked with the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative in New Delhi, NDTV Good Times in Mumbai, Here&Now365 in London and with artist Subodh Gupta in Gurgaon. Expedition 2: Barrages and the Fragmentation of the River Indus Pak Khawateen Painting Club The Pak Khawateen Painting Club was formed by invitation in 2020 to create a new commission at the Lahore Biennale 02. It is an off-shoot of the Murree Museum Artist Residency, an artist-run initiative to examine postcolonial conditions and the decay of the British Raj-era hill station, Murree. The collective currently comprises of four members: Saulat Ajmal is an artist, educator and independent curator. She is a Lecturer at the National College of Arts, Lahore and contributes writings on art for various publications. Amna Hashmi is a visual artist and art educationist, currently teaching as Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and Design at COMSATS University, Islamabad. Saba Khan is a visual artist and Assistant Professor at the National College of Arts, Lahore. She founded the Murree Museum Artist Residency and the Pak Khawateen Painting Club. Zohreen Murtaza is a Lecturer in the Cultural Studies Department at the National College of Arts, Lahore. She is a visual artist and writer. Bakar Kahani Babar Sheikh is a filmmaker, multimedia artist, musician and educator. His film narratives are centered around urbanism and its effects on everyday human interaction. Babar graduated from the Department of Communication Design at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture (IVS) in 1999 and is currently enrolled in the M.Phil. in Art and Design program at IVS. He is an Assistant Professor of Media Sciences at SZABIST. Eik Yaad Jo Kisi Ko Yaad Nahin Syed Safdar Ali Syed Safdar Ali received a BFA from the National College of Arts, Lahore in 2014. He has exhibited his work widely in Pakistan and has been the recipient of the ADA Awards 2019, Mansion Artist Residency 2018, ISL and Canvas Gallery Artist Residency 2017, Pioneer Cement and Canvas Gallery Artist Residency 2017, and Vasl Taaza Tareen International Artists Residency 2014. His art practice explores human beings’ inability to identify with the structures created by them, specifically the contradiction between simultaneous distrust of social structures and desire to fit into them. Safdar currently teaches at the Shaheed Allah Buksh Soomro University of Art, Design and Heritages, Jamshoro, and is completing his M.Phil. in Art and Design at IVS.
Sumbul Khan
Mishal Khattak
Faiza Mushtaq
Seher Naveed
Sadia Salim
Niyati Dave and Manjiri Dube of Khoj
Niyati Dave is a writer and curator based in New Delhi. She is currently Curator and Program Manager at Khoj International Artists’ Association where she leads Does the Blue Sky Lie? Testimonies of Air’s Toxicities, a three year project that explores the troubled ecology of Delhi’s air, along with working on other projects about ecology and the climate crisis. She studied Art History and Museum Studies at Smith College. Before joining Khoj, she worked at the Economic and Political Weekly, India’s leading academic journal, and as the Communications Officer at the Centre for Policy Research for a project conducting collaborative research on urban informality.
Babar Sheikh
Volume: 03 | Concrete Editor: Omer Wasim Editorial Board: Asma Mundrawala Editorial Note Of Disposable People and Discarded Things A Commentary on Sohail Zuberi’s Archaeologies of Tomorrow Laurent Gayer Laurent Gayer is a senior research fellow at CERI-Sciences Po, Paris. He specialises in the social and political fabric of South Asian urban worlds, with a particular focus on Karachi. His latest book, Karachi: Ordered Disorder and the Struggle for the City (London: Hurst, 2014), is the result of extensive fieldwork in Karachi between 2001 and 2013, and defends the idea that in contrast to the “chaotic” and “anarchic” city portrayed in journalistic accounts, there is order of a kind in the city’s condition of chronic civil strife. His forthcoming book extends this discussion by looking at the adjustment of the city’s industrial capitalism to chronic uncertainty and insecurity, while questioning the forms of ordering that have emerged in the city’s industrial estates over the past decades. Becoming A Problem Rahma Muhammad Mian and Zahra Malkani Rahma Muhammad Mian is trying to live a life of love and peace in the dystopia that is Karachi and, needless to say, it is quite a ride. She tries to make an honest living by teaching yoga, as well as undergraduate courses in science, technology and society (STS), media, communication, and cultural studies. She trained in classical hatha yoga in South India, and in Vipassana in Sri Lanka and Thailand. She also has a Master's in Media, Culture, and Communications From New York University, USA. Zahra Malkani is an artist based in Karachi and an Assistant Professor of Practice at the Communication & Design Department at Habib University. Her research-based art practice spans multiple media and explores the politics of development and infrastructure in the city. She has previously taught at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture and is a co-founder of the Karachi LaJamia, an experimental pedagogical project seeking to politicise art education and explore new radical pedagogies and art practices. Studies in Form Seher Shah and Randhir Singh Seher Shah and Randhir Singh have collaborated on a number of projects over the past few years to explore relationships between drawing, photography, and architecture, furthering an ongoing interest into concepts of architectural scale and sculptural intent. Shah's practice uses experiences From the field of art and architecture to question the rationale language of architectural drawing. Her works use drawing, printmaking, and sculpture to think about relationships between the individual, landscape, and architecture through the deconstruction and fragmenting of forms and structures. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Architecture From the Rhode Island School of Design in 1998. Singh is an architectural photographer who draws on his education as an architect with a focus on issues related to architecture and urbanism. His work explores relationships within the urban landscape such as housing typologies, waterways and hydraulic architecture, and industrial structures. He received his Bachelor of Architecture and Bachelor of Science degrees From the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York in 1999. Portfolio Ledelle Moe Ledelle Moe received an MFA From Virginia Commonwealth University’s Sculpture Department in 1996, and soon after accepted a position to teach in the Interdisciplinary Sculpture Department at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. Moe returned to live and work in South Africa in 2013, and currently teaches at Stellenbosch University. In 2002, she was the recipient of the Joan Mitchell Award, and in 2008, the Kreeger Museum Artist Award. Moe has exhibited in a number of venues including the Kulturhuset, International Sculpture Center, and American Academy of Arts and Letters, to name a few. Her projects include large-scale concrete installations at Socrates Park, Pratt Institute, and The African Museum of Art in Washington DC; other projects include installations in Salzburg, Brooklyn, Boston, Cape Town, India, the Biennale Internationale D’Art (Martinique), Perez Museum, the Biennale De Dakar, and an upcoming solo exhibition at MASS MoCA. We Who Were Our Own Himali Singh Soin Himali Singh Soin works across text, performance, and moving image. She utilises metaphors From the natural environment to construct speculative cosmologies that manifest the non-linear entanglements between human and non-human life. Her poetic methodology explores myriad ways of knowing, From scientific to intuitional, indigenous, and alchemical epistemologies. Selected credits: Whitechapel Gallery, ICA, Serpentine Marathon and Park Nights, Art Licks, Art Night London (London); Kadist (San Francisco); the Dhaka Art Summit (Dhaka); Abrons Art Centre (NYC); Brick Bar (Riga); Serendipity Arts Festival (Goa); Khoj (New Delhi); OCA (Norway); Fabrika (Moscow); A Tale of a Tub (Rotterdam); Bucharest Art Week (Bucharest); Meet Factory (Prague) among others. Her writing appears regularly in Artforum, among others. She is the recipient of the 2019 Frieze Artist Award for her work on the poles and their uncanny bearing on the rest of the world.
Durreshahwar Alvi
Omer Wasim
Volume: 02 | Conflict Editorial Note Zarmeene Shah Zarmeene Shah is an academic, independent curator, and writer currently based in Karachi, Pakistan. One of the first qualified curators in the country with an MA in Critical & Curatorial Studies From Columbia University, she has curated and been involved in the production of several notable and often large-scale exhibitions, both institutionally and independently. She is currently Associate Professor and Head of the Liberal Arts program at the Indus Valley School of Art & Architecture in Karachi, and was Curator-at-Large of the inaugural Karachi Biennale 2017. Nadine Ahmed Nadine Ahmed graduated with a BA in Modern History and Politics From Royal Holloway, University of London in 2008, and later an LLB and Bar-at-Law qualification From University of Law, London, in 2010. She practiced law briefly, but then began work in Education in 2012 and contributed to educational learning and development during this time. She worked as Adjunct Faculty at Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture From 2014-2015. She recently achieved a distinction in her MA in Effective Learning From the Institute of Education, UCL. She continues to work in educational learning and development, and is pursuing further research interests. Aaron Tobey and Malcolm Rio Aaron Tobey is a Ph.D. student at Yale University studying architectural history and theory. He is currently conducting research on the relationship between digital tools, forms of representation, and political agency. Aaron attended the Rhode Island School of Design on a graduate fellowship for his Master of Architecture, and obtained his Bachelor of Science in Architecture at the University of Cincinnati—during which time he also attended the École Spéciale d'Architecture in Paris. His academic work has explored the effects of utilising global trade mechanisms, new media, and perception on architectural space as a tool to affect social change. He has worked professionally as a digital artist for the architectural visualisation firm, Studio AMD, and for a number of small architecture firms around the United States. Malcolm Rio is a graphic and architectural designer and thinker From Amherst, Massachusetts, currently pursuing a Master in Architectural Studies, Urbanism at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His current research at MIT investigates the relationship between architecture, urban planning, and utopian narratives in producing forms of subaltern or "blackened" citizenship. Before MIT, Rio was a teaching-fellow at the Maryland Institute College of Art, where he taught graphic design, architectural design, and foundation studio courses. Rio received his Master of Architecture From the Rhode Island School of Design, and his Bachelor of Science in Philosophyand Bachelor of Fine Art in graphic design From Towson University. Adeela Suleman | Photographs by Razin Rubin Adeela Suleman studied Sculpture at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, and has a Master’s degree in International Relations From the University of Karachi. She is currently the Chief Executive, founder, and Director of Vasl Artists’ Association in Karachi, in addition to being Associate Professor and Head of the Fine Art Department at Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture. Working with craft makers From a variety of disciplines, Suleman’s work combines craftsmanship and beauty with the fragility of life and death. Her works are replete with the imagery of bloodshed, death, and violence. She has participated extensively in solo and group exhibitions around the world. David Brooks David Brooks is an artist whose work considers the relationship between the individual and the built and natural environment. He has exhibited at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, CT; the Dallas Contemporary; Nouveau Musée National de Monaco; Sculpture Center, NYC; The Visual Arts Center, Austin; Galerie für Landschaftskunst, Hamburg; Nevada Museum of Art; and MoMA/PS1, among others. Major commissions include Storm King Art Center, NY; deCordova Museum, MA, and Cass Sculpture Foundation, UK. He is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including a grant From the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, a research grant to the Ecuadorian Amazon From the Coypu Foundation, and a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship. Mina Cheon Mina Cheon (PhD, MFA) is a Korean-American global new media artist and scholar, and a Fulltime Professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She is on the Board of Directors of the New Media Caucus of the College Art Association and is an Associate Editor of the Media-N Journal. Cheon is the author of Shamanism and Cyberspace (2009) and her art has been exhibited in or is in the collection of numerous and varied museums and galleries internationally. Represented by Ethan Cohen Gallery in New York, Cheon’s art is currently featured at the international Busan Biennale 2018 in Korea. Sadia Salim Sadia Salim graduated with a B.Des. degree From the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi, and an Ed.M. in Art and Art Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York. Salim is a recipient of the coveted Commonwealth Arts and Crafts Award and Fulbright Scholarship. She is a practicing artist and has participated in conferences, residencies, and exhibitions in Pakistan and internationally. She has extensive experience in teaching art and design at the undergraduate level and coordinating the Department of Ceramics at IVS (2005-2010). Currently she is Associate Professor of Fine Art, and Director Graduate Studies at IVS.
Editor: Durreshahwar Alvi
Editorial Board:
Asma Mundrawala
Durreshahwar Alvi
Omer Wasim
Volume: 01 | The Archive Editor: Editorial Note Adnan Madani Adnan Madani is an artist and lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. His research interests include globalisation, secularism and subjectivity in contemporary culture, and the work of Wittgenstein and Jean-Luc Nancy. His recent writing has focused on Islam and archaeology, curatorial ethics, and the thinking of destruction in modernity, especially as seen through contemporary Pakistani art and cinema. Seher Naveed Seher Naveed has a BFA From the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, and an MA in Fine Art From Central St. Martins College of Art & Design. She is a practicing artist interested in the changing geography of Karachi and has shown her work extensively, and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Fine Art at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture. Her ongoing exhibition and publication project, Drawing Documents, looks at various drawing practices in Pakistan as research. Heba Islam Heba Islam is an Assistant Professor in the Liberal Arts Programme at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture. She completed her BSc From Lahore University of Management Sciences and her MA in Anthropology From Columbia University, and is interested in urban issues in the global south and militarisation. As a participant in the Gadap Sessions, she also started exploring the materiality and infrastructure of oppression, and plans to continue researching the same. Madiha Aijaz Madiha Aijaz has an MFA in Photography From Parsons as a Fulbright Scholar. In 2014, her photographic work on Hindu temples in Pakistan was published by Niyogi Books. She has produced and written documentary films; and her work has appeared in publications like Commonwealth Writers, Dawn, Herald, Roads and Kingdoms, India Today, Mint, Hindu and The Wall Street Journal. She teaches in the Department of Communication Design at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture. Fazal Rizvi Fazal Rizvi is an interdisciplinary artist exploring notions of memory, loss, erasures, migration in his practice. He was selected for the Arcus Project Residency in Japan (2011), was a recipient of the Charles Wallace Pakistan Trust and British Council Residency at Gasworks in London (2014), and was invited to participate in the Vasl International Artist Residency in Karachi (2015). He is also a member of the Tentative Collective, and teaches at Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture. He graduated From the National College of Arts. Veera Rustomji Veera Rustomji is a visual artist and writer based in Karachi. Her ongoing research is driven by an interest in parallel dialogues of migration and heritage that inform her practice. She is currently working as an Assistant Coordinator for Vasl Artists’ Association, and pursues freelance projects with numerous publishers. Veera has displayed her work within Pakistan, and was selected as an artist in residence for the Murree Museum Artists’ Residency (2017). She has a BFA From the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture. Mariyam Nizam Mariyam Nizam worked with architect and conservationist Yasmin Lari for more than five years after graduating From the National College of Arts with a degree in architecture. She specializes in research projects pertaining to heritage conservation, and has also been engaged in a number of community building initiatives in rural settlements across Pakistan. She was previously a faculty member in the Department of Architecture at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, and also a member of the executive committee, Institute of Architects.
Asma Mundrawala
Editorial Board:
Asma Mundrawala
Durreshahwar Alvi
Kiran Ahmad
Omer Wasim
Architecture Design Research Lab
The Architecture Design Research Lab is housed within the department of Architecture at IVS to pursue (and lead in) innovative research pertaining to the design of the built environment. It seeks to promote architectural research described by Christopher Frayling as research into, for and through design. In doing so it hopes to create discourse and dialogue ranging from the practice of design pedagogy to the practice of built design
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