Ever heard of Karachi? It lies 11\,700 kilometers from Vancouver\, on the coast of the Arabian Se a in Pakistan. For those curious to explore the city but unable to afford t he airfare or keep hearing that it’s too unsafe to travel there\, here is y our lucky day! Hot off the press\, Right to the City: Travel Guide to K arachiwill take you on an imaginative journey right to the city.
The Right to the City: Travel Guide to Karachi explores the exper ience of living in the city of Karachi\, Pakistan and the production\, repr esentation and contestation of its spaces. Six Pakistani artists – Bani Abi di\, Manizhe Ali\, Sara Khan\, Seher Naveed\, Shayan Rajani and Roohi Ahmed – through their works and texts presented in this book\, claim the right to represent their city at a time when the media renders it s realities opaque and remote. While media reportage on the endless violenc e and conflict continue to produce representations of the city as a dangero us battleground\, this publishing project seeks to repopulate Karachi as a lived and embodied place.
The Right to the City: Travel Guide to Karachi transforms readers into imaginary tourists and enables them to explore the contested geographies of a city often categorised as “failed a nd feral” by Western standards. The book appropriates the popular medium of a travel guide to give visibility and access to surprisingly alternative v ersions of Karachi that are otherwise continually silenced or overlooked. B ringing forth conflicting images that resist fixed representations and illu sory stereotypes\, the project critically questions the dominant narratives that have come to represent our perception of Karachi\, and allows the cit y to emerge as lived spaces of sociality and struggle.
Curated by
This pr oject was made possible through support from the Killy Foundation and the A udain Endowment for Curatorial Studies through the Department of Art Histor y\, Visual Art and Theory in collaboration with the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at The University of British Columbia.
Image: M ausoleum of Jinnah\, Photo by Manizhe Ali
LOCATION:221A Gallery GEO:49.278681;-123.098881 URL;VALUE=URI:https://ahva.ubc.ca/events/event/right-to-the-city-travel-gui de-to-karachi-curated-by-ccst-candidate-shahana-rajani/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://ahva.cms.arts.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/37/2021/05/1211.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Vancouver BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0800 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 DTSTART:20130310T100000 TZNAME:PDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR