Material responses to anxious ecologies were at the centre of the recently concluded Lahore Biennale, Of Mountains and Seas, which mapped the reflections of 60 local and international artists across 10 key historical sites in Lahore. The third edition of the biennale, curated by John Tain, ran from October 05 - November 08, 2024.
Of Mountains and Seas alluded to a wider topographical scope and an engagement with ecological emergencies that persist within and beyond the city of Lahore. In his curatorial note, Tain referred to the thematic axis of the Lahore Biennale, “…the vernacular culture found in the architecture and craft traditions from the Global South suggests ways that history offers resources for imagining sustainable futures. In doing so, the biennale not only highlights the rich culture of Lahore and Pakistan, its human side, but also suggests how societies across [the] Global South, rather than rely on the actions of industrialised nations, can take agency and contribute to global conversations on climate futures by reconnecting with local and Indigenous cultures, as resources.”
This call for collective response is timely. Lahore is choking. Annually, the haze that smothers it also mutates the city to hold the lenticular effect of a site that is both the romantic capital of culture and gardens and a polluted metropolis. The curatorial ambit of the biennale was articulated through its site specificity; particularly because these sites referenced histories that ranged from the culturally significant (the Lahore Fort) to quieter, forgotten spaces of historical descent and activism (Bradlaugh Hall). The chemistry of the works in their considered locations prompted reminders that ancient technologies can serve as contemporary solutions. In the gardens of Nasir Bagh, a community park in downtown Lahore, INLAND’s (Fernando Garcia Dory, Sergio Bravo) Crossroads Tamboo (2024) was an outdoor architectural installation that explored the convergence of bee-keeping and pastoralist practices in Pakistan and Central Asia as a community-led solution. Other displays explored anxieties around disrupted ecologies amplified by climate emergencies.
Works like Jennifer Tee’s Ancestral Structure, Deep Life (2024) and Imran Qureshi’s Water Bodies (2024) displayed at the Shalimar Gardens—a series of sprawling mid 17th century Mughal pleasure gardens, now in the heart of a commercial district—hinted at a copacetic relationship between natural and urban environments. Situated in the Lahore Fort, Ali Kazim’s Ruins (2024) explored the ruinous consequences of climate change through the tacit mapping of ancient geographies onto current topographies. In this large-scale triptych, an arid terrain unfolds, referencing an unexcavated section of the archaeological site of Harappa. Once the centre of civilisation, the muted and precise graphite-rendered landscape features only scorched soil and sky. Adjacent to this drawing, a terracotta sculpture serves as the solitary representation of a human footprint in the form of a damaged human heart, crafted from broken earthen shards that have been (partially) reconstructed. Clay here, becomes a metaphor for both flesh and the ephemerality of human life and its accoutrements and that nature is a sublime force that births and then buries life back into itself – the earth.
—Maliha Noorani
