Arts in Movement: The Tide Country

Developing from Saba Khan’s annual, artist-run Murree Museum Artist Residency (MMRA) that invites artists to investigate the tangles of bureaucratic and ecological, and municipal issues amidst the Raj-era ruins and postcolonial realities of the hill-station Murree, the artist collective Pak Khawateen Painting Club (PKPC) was formed in 2019 in response to an invitation by Hoor Al Qasimi, curator of Lahore Biennale 02 (2020). Like MMRA, PKPC reverse-engineers the modernist logic of powerful megastructures, specifically dam coloniality from British colonialism to post-Partition independence.

In this work, the PKPC embarked on four expeditions to document the historical and future impacts of dams constructed on the Indus River, which carries water and sediment 3,000 kilometers from the Himalya Mountains down the coastal Sindh. Dams divert an estimated 60% of the river’s water, irrigating agriculture but displacing indigenous people, disrupting ecosystems, and degrading land through an unequal redistribution of water and alluvial sediments.

Shielded from unsolicited attention by PKPC uniform, which mixes elements from Pierre Cardin’s designer uniforms for PIA (Pakistan International Airlines) and British colonial Girl Guides uniforms, the artists gather samples and data as they investigate the conflicted histories, hydrological engineering, and water bodies – including the blind dolphin Bholan, Khawaja Khizr, and water activists – that converge in the tide country.
 

Saba Khan is a multimedia artist based in London. Her work reenvisions historical expeditions, memorials, monuments, and water projects by juxtaposing, artifice, grandeur, and satire, so that cracks within historical structures can be explored. She founded Murree Museum Artist Residency (2014–2020) and the artist collective Pak Khawateen Painting Club (2019). Her exhibitions and residences include Delfina Foundation, Jameel Art Centre, Karachi Biennale, Lahore Biennial, Onassis AiR, Paul Mellon Centre, and Sharjah Biennial. She has received grants from British Council, Foundation for the Arts Initiative, 421, Graham Foundation, and Sharjah Art Foundation. Her work is the collections of Sharjah Art Foundation and Ford Foundation, and it has been published in the New York Times, Stir World, and Asia Art Pacific.