SKY FRAMES
Karachi Biennale 2017
Istanbul Bienal 2019
ada award 2021-2022
Metal structure on main Clifton road. Karachi
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I started photographing hoardings in 2009. The scale of the metal grid and how it framed the sky fascinated me. I felt these empty frames mirrored the perspectives of individual lives that see a slice of the picture, not the entire panorama. Through the frames, I would often watch the grey Karachi sky change colour. Occasionally, I would spot kites glide through them, never knowing on which side of the structure the birds were until they became larger or smaller. Some disappeared.
Due to the absence of a local government system, there was no regulator to oversee the mushrooming of billboards in the city. By 2015 Karachi had almost turned into a giant advertisement with every street littered with huge hoardings, many on structures so flawed they led to repeated loss of lives. On May 5th 2016 The Supreme Court maintained that there was no law that permits installing outdoor advertising on billboards, hoardings and signboards on public property and ordered the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation, the Defence Housing Authority and all the cantonment boards to remove hoardings across the city by June 30th 2016. They were taken down but left by the roadsides and empty plots. A year later, some still lie there. |
