Subjective Atlas of Pakistan

Description

What and who do we talk about when we speak of ‘Pakistan’ and the ‘Pakistani’? This question was posed to more than eighty artists, designers, and other creative souls across Pakistan.

They responded with maps, inventories, photographs, and drawings that explored the multifaceted microcosm of their real and imagined lives. These investigations will take you through the labyrinths of cityscapes, hidden lairs beneath layers of domes, nationalist rants, fictional propaganda, and corporate deceptions.

This book revels in the unexpected and the overlooked, the hidden and the mysterious, the obscure and bizarre. Through these compelling contemporary cartographies, the Subjective Atlas of Pakistan offers a humanized vision of ongoing conflicts pacified through visual poetics of personal stories, fears, hopes, and dreams.

Table of Contents

1. Road to Zindabad by Taqi Shaheen, Annelys de Vet
2. A wing and many prayers by Kamila Shamsie
3. How to draw a map? by Ayaz Jokhio
4. Alternative maps of Pakistan
5. Pakistan according to Pakistan by Samar Raza
6. Cartographic lies by Roohi Ahmed
7. Mapodrama by Hazique Zaheer
8. Subtexts of Karachi by Durriya Kazi
9. City lines by Wajid Ali Daharkiwala
10. Liquid life by Tahir Kayani
11. Walking on the shoulders of Haramosh by Mujtaba Ezaz
12. High life by Danial Shah
13. Round around Karachi by Nasim Ahmed
14. A visit to my home town by Aleem Dad Khan
15. Roadside religion by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
16. Domed legacies by Farooq Soomro
17. A brief history of Badshahi Mosque by Qasim Naeem
18. Morirros’s fossil by Naiza Khan
19. A guide to ‘uncovered’ Lyari by Madiha Sikander
20. A city emerges from a labour room by Naila Mahmood
21. Thy gentle head shall wear a crown by Furqan Haider Bhatti
22. Who do you want to be when you grow up? by Madiha Sikander
23. Brothers by Malcolm Hutcheson
24. Find the real Jinnah by Imran Channa
25. Sons of the soil by Haroon Khan Wazir
26. Grand miniatures by Usman Saeed
27. Cover girls by Zainab Marvi
28. Eyes on thighs by Ahmed Ali Manganhar
29. Covered in style by Sarah Javed
30. My wardrobe calendar by Farrukh Afaq
31. The new suit by Monazza Fatima Naqvi
32. All that glitters by Zainab Nasir
33. The legend of lotas by Hafsa Macdi
34. 24-feet journey by Rabeya Jalil
35. Waiting to cross by Sohail Zuberi
36. Going through the roof by Naseem Ahmed
37. Weightlifters by Furqan Haider Bhatti
38. Mobile typographies by Murtaza Ali
39. Road suffering by Ibrahim Yahya
40. Street survivors by Durriya Kazi
41. Where the streets have no lights by Arsalan Haneef
42. Two-phone theory and smart wallets of Karachi by Rida Rohail, Onaissa Rizwani, Arsalan Hanif
43. Lahoropoly by Shumyle Haider, Maham Bosan
44. Consumptional cart-o-graphies by Sarah Javed
45. The perfect go(a)l by Nimra Saleem
46. A guide to dhaba tea-drinking etiquette by Sara Khan
47. Watching you, watching me by Naila Mahmood
48. As seen on TV by Sabin Agha
49. News in use by Alyna Farooqui
50. From religious and corporate advertising to political protests by Rashid Rana
51. Prohibited by Mudasser Farooq
52. Treasure chests by Zaheer Chaudhry
53. Welcome to the neighbourhood by Risham Syed
54. Street smart by Sarah Javed
55. Howzat! by Aman Asif
56. Alternate playing fields by Furqan Haider Bhatti
57. Diving into the unknown by Nameera Ahmed
58. Dao: the moves by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
59. Hands up by Tapu Javeri
60. Divine conversations by Arif Mahmood
61. Make a wish by Sana Khan Mamdot
62. Jahaiz & Joseph Colony by Malcolm Hutcheson
63. Made in heaven by Romano Karim Yusuf
64. Desperate routes by Khadim Ali, Raza Taj
65. Articles of love by Muhammad Hassan Miraj
66. Relics of separation by Sohail Zuberi, Omer Wasim
67. Home away from home by Madiha Sikander
68. Faces of Partition by Sarah Hashmi
69. For office use only by Ahsan Jamal
70. Border rituals by Mahwish Chishti
71. Mythological identities by Adeela Suleman
72. Alternative flags of Pakistan
73. Index of contributors
74. Credits
75. Subjective Atlas series

Authors Biography

Taqi Shaheen, Film-maker and visual artist, and Annelys de Vet, Designer and initiator

Taqi Shaheen is a film-maker and media artist based in Pakistan whose work crosses mediums and defies genre distinctions to fashion witty and curious observations of contemporary South Asian cultures and mediascapes. Since 2004, he has been working closely with artists, designers, musicians, and performers to produce collaborative works using artistic practices, pedagogic alternatives, and creative investigations to address the experiences of learning and the dilemmas of education in the developing world. As a director and curator, his previous works include a documentary series on artists as educators, Lessons on Lessons (TMN, 2016), The Petman Girls (TMN, 2012), Whose Pakistan is it anyway? (TMN, 2010), Morris Mata (2009), Kundun (ILO/BBC/PTV, 2004), and Congregation of the Distressed (2005).

Annelys de Vet is a Belgium based Dutch designer and initiator, running a practice for gentle power and radical imagination. The work explores the role of design in relation to the public and political discourse. From 2009–19 she headed the master in design ‘Think tank for visual strategies’ at the Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam—where she earned an MDes herself in 1999. She founded the inclusive design label ‘Disarming Design from Palestine’ that develops, presents, and sells useful products from Palestine. Since 2003 de Vet initiated a series of subjective atlases that map countries from a human perspective. Previous editions covered Palestine (2007), Mexico (2011), Hungary (2011), etc.