Dreamscape, a performance and installation art evening, was held at Amin Gulgee Gallery, Karachi, with the curatorial theme of “collective dreaming”.

Amin Gulgee Gallery has become a pioneer of performance and live installation art with ‘Dreamscape’, its third such show. The first exhibition of this sort took place in 2013 and was fittingly called ‘Riwhyti: One Night Stand,’ featuring performances on issues surrounding birth, death, and marriage. ‘Fresh’, which took place earlier this year, focused on young artists, all under thirty, and featured a mix of two-dimensional, three-dimensional and performative works from cities and rural locales all over Pakistan. A survey of contemporary art being produced by artists at a turning point in their career, the “conceptually and technically resolved works” highlighted the “creative voice and visual language of a critical mass of Pakistani artists”, said Amin Gulgee.

‘Dreamscape’, which took seven months of discussion with the artists and curation by Amin Gulgee and Zarmeene Shah to produce, brought together performers from various fields, including theatre, television and fashion design. The exhibition, which took place two days after the deadly attacks in Peshawar, saw many artists, such as Muhammad Ali and Manizhe Ali, reconfiguring their works to comment and circle around questions of mourning and memory.

The artist statement opened with a quotation from Yoko Ono: “A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.”

The curatorial statement in full:

“Curated by Zarmeene Shah and Amin Gulgee, Dreamscape brings together almost 50 visual, performance and theatre artists, fashion designers and musicians in an exhibition of installation and performance art. Fostered through regular individual and group meetings with the core group of about 35 Karachi-based artists over a seven-month period, with the curatorial agenda finding its basis in enacting a kind of ‘collective dream’, artists have formed visible connections and collaborations alongside the production of individual works created specifically for this show. More than a dozen artists from out of station have also been invited to send a ‘dreamscape object’ that represents their individual interpretation of our collective reverie.”

Images courtesy of Jamal Ashiqain.