The Trojan Donkey
[The Corona Chronicles]
2020
Curated by Amin Gulgee and Sara Vaqar Pagganwala

The Trojan Donkey was conceived at the height of the global lockdown during the COVD-19 pandemic. This online exhibition, curated by Amin, Sara Pagganwala and Adam Fahy-Majeed, focused on performance through video. Like the Trojan Horse of lore, Sara, Adam and Amin wished to infiltrate, but only to challenge stereotypes and preconceived ideas. The horse was replaced by a donkey for the title because it was, for the curators, a symbol of Karachi: stubborn yet fleet and resilient. On April 25, 2020, from 9:18 pm to 11:13 pm (Pakistan Standard Time), the curators uploaded 80 works from 25 countries, some live, onto a dedicated Facebook page. Included was a two-channel video by Australian artist Alana Victoria Hunt which narrows in on Donald Trump’s gesturing hands during his inaugural address at the US Capitol building. In ORLAN’s 2018 video Pétition contre la mort (Petition Against Death), the French artist passionately calls for an uprising against death. Cameroonian writer Lionel Manga wanders through a marketplace in Douala reading aloud the poem L’Acte de respirer (The Act of Breathing) by Congolese author Sony Lab’ou Tansi (1947-1995), who died of AIDS during that pandemic. In Maha Minhaj’s Thinking About You, the Pakistani artist fidgets on a chair, then slides to her knees, resting her head on the chair’s seat, before crawling between its legs. In a world where populism is on the rise, and political poles drift further apart, platforms such as Facebook can sometimes exasperate divisions. For their part, Amin, Sara and Adam wished to use the social networking site to bring artists together in a time of shared plague and isolation. Ironically, the post-show Zoom webinar, also posted on Facebook, was hacked. The panelists from North America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia were forced to listen to an anonymous, five-minute outpouring of racist vitriol. In the end, this hateful intrusion only added to their discussion.