Horizon is Home explores art's response to the climate crisis and humanity's connection to nature. Today when two or more individuals talk about t
Horizon is Home explores art’s response to the climate crisis and humanity’s connection to nature.
Today when two or more individuals talk about the weather, they are dealing with a greater crisis and a looming issue. The changing climate is not of one city, region, country, or continent, but of the entire planet. In the not-too-distant past, torrential rains have occurred in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, regions known for their desert, high temperature and dry seasons. Climate change is taking place so rapidly that one anticipates Cambridge, a town far from the English Channel, by 2050 will have its beach. Likewise, recently a melted glacier in the northern areas of Pakistan drowned the only land passage between China and Pakistan, and in its place emerged, a large, blue, and beautiful lake. Floods, fires, earthquakes, epidemics, and unexpected weather conditions are normal phenomena now – from Amazon to Australia, and from Florida to Sri Lanka.
With the current, and unprecedented changes in climate, one suspects that like several other species, humans may also disappear or go through a slow, but irreversible modification, if the issue of the environment is not addressed in every sphere of life. From our breakfast table to our bazaar, from our workplaces to our public parks, from our eating joints to our roads – and from our university halls to our artists’ studios.
Artists, generally regarded as the socially conscious contingent of a population, are the most vulnerable when it comes to the choices of their materials, substances, and locations. Yet for a creative individual, there are several – forking paths, and options, which at the start may seem divergent, even conflicting, but eventually converge. First and foremost is the preference for natural and recyclable substitutes of commercially manufactured, and synthetic-based materials; but if some of these substances are irreplaceable then one may find imaginative solutions. Like time-based works, digital and immersive installations, virtual formats, sound pieces, performances, etc.
In the recently concluded artists’ residency Horizon is Home, participating artists observed the environment on various levels: outside and internal, ecology and economics, social and psychological, material and metaphysical. Organized by the Articulate Studios, was held in Chitral and Lahore, followed by the exhibition of works produced during that period at the venue of Articulate Studios, Lahore.
As the residency revolved around the issues of identity, location, alienation, displacement, and the disjunction between mankind and nature; each participant, either employing painting, drawing, photography, installation, video, sound, or text, has responded to some of these concepts, which also serve as points of reflection and a means to explore personal, societal, cultural, and formal concerns. The body of works emerging out of this endeavor – is the outcome of participants’ contact with their physical surroundings, encounters with varying inhabitants, and their interaction amongst them.
In/through their diverse projects, the participating artists inculcated experiences, observations and memories of their present and past, and of familiar, distant, comfortable, turbulent surroundings. Their work not only addresses the climate crisis, it also embodies the gap between private and public, natural and industrial, history and its archiving; as well as the politics, profit, and economy – changing the shape/fabric of the planet Earth.
Each creative individual, while sharing the same space, exposure, and location has reacted to what was in front of his/her eyes; besides incorporating his/her personal – as well as – common recollections. Seema Nusrat dealing with ecology has created an installation of a tree (cedar or pine) )-like structure, which instead of comprising wood branches and organic foliage, consists of a green plastic net (a synthetic material used for protecting plants/trees). The work placed in the lawn near the rows of trees – presents the contrast and conflict between a natural order of habitation and an industrial/consumerist way of living.
The unprecedented increase of cars, factories, and machinery has altered the balance of existence; recurrently observed in the omnipresent smog that enveloped several towns in South Asia, besides cities across the globe. Farooq Soomro in his ‘light-sensitive’ photographs has compared how the shift in atmosphere depends more on the mechanism of multinational business rather than the normal natural factors. Snapshots of his city of residences – Lahore, and Chitral – are combined with pictures of Karachi, the metropolis he spent many years of his life in. The entire narrative, in a subtle manner, indicates the alarming quality of air as well as human lungs. Samina Hassan Laghari has also blended references from her village with recordings of Lahore – commenting on the politics of water. In her video installation, the glimpses of a barbed-wire structure in a rural area, a boy scrawling outlines of a tree, a house, and some clouds on the surface of dry earth, accompanied by the text about channelizing natural resources by unjust powers present a scenario that concerns our present and future scenario, and not for one settlement but several regions, not about one individual but the entire humanity.
Humanity is not limited to mankind, but it is the humility in recognizing all that surrounds us is a sensitive entity, has a role in the larger scheme of things, and possesses a soul. Salar Marri finds the link between human and nature – especially through his depiction of trees in his loosely rendered works on paper and his sensitive photographs. The human in his series of works is as much part of the environment as of any alien condition. The atmosphere of alienation, estrangement, (muted) conflict unfolds in Marri’s sound piece too, based upon a short story of Raymond Carver.
The paradox is a prime motif in Abdul Haadi’s video installation; conveying his recording of a barber shop in Chitral city, with its multiple pictorial frames and voices. Political discourse is shown side by side with the act of a citizen getting his hair trimmed. Hence communicating how distanced and diverse phenomena are interlocked to shape ourselves and our environment. An environment that has been challenged by human intervention. In Haadi’s other video installation, wood chairs are burnt inside an encompassing circle of fire.
This work in particular can be read as a metaphor for our globe and its unavoidable future. A horizon not far from home, as suggested in the works of all participants of Articulate Studios’ residency, Horizon is Home.
