Zarmeene Shah

In this public lecture, *Spatial and Visual Impacts of a Conflicted City: Contemporary Art in Karachi*, curator and writer Zarmeene Shah presents a continued investigation into the changing face of the sprawling metropolis of Karachi through codes of overt and covert conflict, as explored through ideas of power and control, geography and territory, right and access. Viewing curating as a series of (interlinked) research-based projects, these concerns have manifested in a broad range of exhibitions and writings, with a sustained focus over some years on the study of the visual and spatial impact of measures of barricading, policing, securitization, militarization, surveillance, and control in the urban context, and how this relates to the position/rights of those that inhabit the city. This investigation branches further into the ways in which conflict manifests in our interaction with the city, its land and its environments, impacting both the human and the non-human. Tracing these concerns through the research-based practices of contemporary Pakistani artists, including Seema Nusrat, Bani Abidi, Seher Naveed, Sohail Zuberi, and Madiha Aijaz, amongst others, and taking as a case study the changing face of the city of Karachi, marked by a history of violence and conflict, Shah’s research unfolds into a larger regional, and then global framework.

This presentation will include a pre-recorded lecture followed by a live Q&A session.

This lecture is presented by the UBC Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory with support from the Audain Endowment for Curatorial Studies and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Exchange, and in partnership with the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver.

### Biography 

Zarmeene Shah is an academic, and an independent curator and writer currently based in Karachi, Pakistan. Focusing on global contemporary art with specialist knowledge of the Global South, Shah’s research-based practice investigates ideas of power and control, geography and territory, rights and access. Amongst other large-scale projects, she has served as Curator at Large of the inaugural Karachi Biennale (2017). She is currently Associate Professor and Head of the Liberal Arts program at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture.



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with Zarmeene Shah

Curatorial Lecture

In partnership with the [Art Gallery of Nova Scotia](https://www.artgalleryofnovascotia.ca/) and [Southern Alberta Art Gallery](https://www.saag.ca/), CAG is pleased to host an online launch for Althea Thauberger’s new publication, *The State of the Situation*. Please join us over Zoom for a conversation with the artist and all four contributors to the publication: Jan-Erik Lundström, Melanie O’Brian, Kimberly Phillips and Zarmeene Shah.

Through photography, film, video and performance, Althea Thauberger’s art practice is primarily concerned with the collaborative possibilities of the social documentary form. Her recent projects involve an extended engagement with the sites of their production in order to trace broader social and ideological histories. These sites include the Bohnice Psychiatric Hospital in Prague, Czech Republic; the former Rikard Benčić Factory in Rijeka, Croatia; the image holdings of the former National Film Board Still Image Division, now at the National Gallery of Canada; and the Capri Cinema in Saddar, Karachi, Pakistan. Her screenings and exhibitions include the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver (2019); National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2018); Polygon Gallery, North Vancouver (2018); the inaugural Karachi Biennale (2017); the 2012 Liverpool Biennale; the 17th Biennale of Sydney; La musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2017); The Power Plant, Toronto (2012); Manifesta 7 (2008); The Berkeley Art Museum (2007); BAK, basis voor aktuele kunst, Utrecht (2007), among many others. Thauberger is represented by Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto.

### Biographies 

Jan-Erik Lundstrom is a curator, critic and historian of contemporary art and visual culture. He is the former director of the Sami Center of Contemporary Art, Kárášjohka, Norway; Bildmuseet, Umeå and of Fotografiska museet, Stockholm, Sweden. He is the chairman of the Paletten Art journal and of Skogen Art Space, and the former chairman of the Centre for Photography in Stockholm.. Among his curatorial projects are *Show Colour: Resist, Stand Up,  Advocate, Fall Back Spring Forward*; *Surviving the Future*; *The Map: Critical Cartographies*; *Politics of Place*; *Carlos Capelán: Only You and Society Must Be Defended* (1st Thessaloniki Biennial of Contemporary Art). He was the chief curator of Berlin Photography Festival and the artistic director of the 3rd Bucharest Biennale. He is the author and editor of many books, including Thinking Photography—Using Photography, Contemporary Sami Art and Design, Britta Marakatt-Labba: Embroidered Stories, Nordic Landscapes, Ursula Biemann: Mission Reports, and Irving Penn: Photographs, and he has published in journals such as Afterimage, Afterall, EIKON, European Photography, Glänta, Kunstpluss, and Tema Celeste. Lundström has contributed to major publications such as Horizons: Towards a Global Africa, The Oxford Companion to the Photograph and The History of European Photography of the 20th Century. Lundström has been a guest lecturer at Alvar Aalto University, Helsinki, Konstfackskolan and the Royal Art Academy, Stockholm, Malmö Art Academy, HISK, Antwerpen/Gent, Tarttu Art Academy, Estonia, Universidad de los Ándes, Bogotá, and Oslo Art Academy,  among others.

Melanie O’Brian is a curator and writer living on the unceded territories of xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh and Səl̓ílwəta Nations. She has organized exhibitions and offsite projects nationally and internationally that include the work of artists such as Richard Ibghy/Marilou Lemmens, Marianne Nicolson, Walid Raad, Hito Steyerl, and Althea Thauberger. She was Director/Curator of Simon Fraser University Galleries in Vancouver (2012-2020), Curator/Head of Programs at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto (2011-2012), Director/Curator at Artspeak in Vancouver (2004-2011), and Assistant Curator at Vancouver Art Gallery (2001-2004). She is the editor of $5 Handshake: Art on Treaty 8 Territory (SFU Galleries, 2018), Omer Fast: 5,000 Feet is the Best (Henie Onstad Kunstsenter/The Power Plant/Sternberg, 2012) with Milena Hoegsberg; Stan Douglas: Entertainment (The Power Plant, 2011); Judgment and Contemporary Art Criticism (Artspeak/Fillip, 2010) with Jeff Khonsary; Vancouver Art and Economies (Arsenal Pulp Press/Artspeak, 2007), and has written for catalogues and magazines including Fillip , The Exhibitionist , Yishu and C . She occasionally teaches at the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University and Emily Carr University.

Kimberly Phillips is Director of SFU Galleries at Simon Fraser University. Over the past 15 years, in her roles as gallery director, curator, and teacher based on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓ əm, Skwxwú7mesh and səl̓ílwəta /Selilwitulh peoples, she has worked to amplify the voices of underacknowledged artists and practitioners, ethically vision and build organizational capacity, and create meaningful and unexpected ways for contemporary artists and their publics to find one another. From 2017-2020 she held the position of Curator at the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, overseeing the gallery’s exhibitions, publications and artist residencies. Previous to this she served as Director/Curator of Access Gallery (2013-2017), a Vancouver artist-run centre committed to emergent and experimental practices. Phillips holds a PhD in art history from the University of British Columbia (2007), where she was an Izaak Walton Killam Doctoral Fellow.

Zarmeene Shah is an academic, and an independent curator and writer currently based in Karachi, Pakistan. Focusing on global contemporary art with specialist knowledge of the Global South, Shah’s research-based practice investigates ideas of power and control, geography and territory, rights and access. With an MA in Critical & Curatorial Studies from Columbia University as a Fulbright Scholar in 2010, Shah became one of Pakistan’s first professionally qualified curators. She has curated and been involved in the production of several notable and often large-scale exhibitions of contemporary art institutionally and independently, including *The Rising Tide: New Directions in Art From Pakistan* (2010), the 4th Cairo Video Festival (2011), the politically focused Parrhesia I & II shows (2011 & 2015), the Karachi Biennale (2017), Althea Thauberger’s *Pagal Pagal Pagal Pagal Filmy Dunya* (2017), and Madiha Aijaz’s *Memorial for the Lost Pages* at CAG Vancouver (2020). She has been Consultant for South Asian Art for CCA Derry-Londonderry (Northern Ireland), Assistant Director/Curator at the Mohatta Palace Museum (Karachi), and Curator-at-Large of the inaugural Karachi Biennale (KB17).


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Althea Thauberger: The State of the Situation 

Publication Launch 

*Memorial for the lost pages* presents the intimate videos and photographs of Madiha Aijaz, bringing together the artist’s works in Canada for the first time. Aijaz was based in Karachi, Pakistan, and her work is as complex and layered as the city in which she lived, addressing issues of language and identity, longing and loss, public space and colonial legacies. Her videos explore Karachi’s historic and mostly deserted public libraries. Alongside these works are a series of photographs that examine tensions between awaking desire and admissible sexuality in, as Aijaz described, “contested, often fractured landscapes.” Offsite at Yaletown-Roundhouse Station, another photographic series describes the country’s most famous rail line, the Khyber Mail. Together, Aijaz’s photographs and videos call attention to shared spaces that are seemingly peripheral to contemporary life. They languish from a neglect that threatens their continued existence. Yet, as the artist’s steadfast and often tender camerawork suggests, these spaces persist. 

Co-curated by Kimberly Phillips and Zarmeene Shah

This exhibition is presented in partnership with Capture Photography Festival. Work at Yaletown-Roundhouse Station is presented in partnership with the Canada Line Public Art Program, InTransit BC.


### Biographies

Madiha Aijaz was a filmmaker and photographer based in Karachi, Pakistan. Her book on Hindu temples, *Call to Conscience*, was published in 2014. Recent exhibitions include the Karachi Biennale, Pakistan (2017); 10th International Documentary & Short Film Festival of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram, India (2017); IAWRT Asian Women’s Film Festival, New Delhi (2015); and Urban Flux Film Festival, Johannesburg (2012). Aijaz was an Assistant Professor at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture and received an MFA in Photography from Parsons with a Fulbright Scholarship.

Zarmeene Shah is an independent curator and critic currently based in Karachi, Pakistan. Focusing on contemporary art and continental and semiotic theory, she is particularly interested in new media, the body, and the political in art. Shah attained an undergraduate degree in Fine Art from the Indus Valley School of Art & Architecture in Karachi, followed by an MA in Critical & Curatorial Studies from Columbia University as a Fulbright Scholar (2010). She was Curator-at-Large for the Karachi Biennale in 2017, and also currently serves as Head of the Liberal Arts Program at the Indus Valley School of Art & Architecture.


ProgramGuideSummer2020.pdf

ExhibitionGuideMadihaAijaz.pdf

A photograph of a train employee in a train vestibule. They wear a green uniform with gold insignia and a grey wool hat. They look down, away from the camera, while light from a window glows behind. 

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Seven framed photographs and two monitors hang on two gallery walls. The left wall has two monitors and three photographs, the right wall has four photographs. Two benches sit in front.

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Four framed photographs and two monitors hang on two walls. The left wall has one photograph and the right wall has three photographs and two monitors. One bench sits in the middle of the room.

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Four framed photographs and one monitor hang on two walls. On the left wall there are four framed photographs, on the right wall there is one monitor. Two benches sit in the middle of the room.

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Four framed photographs hang horizontally on the wall of the gallery. Three photographs are grouped together on the right, the fourth sits alone on the left. The frames of the photographs are white.

Zarmeene Shah

Exhibitions

Talks & Events