The Quantum City: Territory | Space | Place
2019
International Public Art Festival –  Karachi
Curated by Amin Gulgee

Amin, along with Zarmeene Shah and Sara Pagganwala, curated The Quantum City: Territory | Space | Place for the first International Public Art Festival in Karachi. The work of 54 national and international artists was placed inside, around and on top of 11 shipping containers positioned in front of the imposing Karachi Port Trust building, which was opened to the public for the first time in over a century for the show. This squatters’ maze of well-travelled, dented crates was symbiotic yet in stark contrast to the imposing sandstone edifice behind them. Shipping crates are very much linked to Karachi as it is Pakistan’s main port. But they also have other associations: Politicians often deliver fiery speeches from on top of containers that authorities routinely place at key intersections to block the movement of people during demonstrations. In Portrait of a Leader, Syed Ammad Tahir stood on a crate before a lectern fitted with a microphone and extemporaneously delivered a speech that was inspired by the oratory of former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as well as by Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. The 180-minute performance drew a crowd of curious passersby the night of the opening, who paused to listen to Ammad’s nonsensical address. On an interior wall of another container were pasted three inkjet vinyl prints by photographer Arif Mahmood. Called Empress Market: Past and Present, it depicted the Karachi marketplace built by the British between 1884 and 1889 to both honor Queen Victoria and discourage lionization of mutinying native soldiers executed on the site after the failed Sepoy rebellion of 1857. On the back wall of another container was projected Dyeing Inayat Khan by the Delhi-based Raqs Media Collective, who animated an original drawing from the early 17^th century in the Mughal miniature style to suggest the threshold between life and death.