An incident of censorship at the Karachi Biennale 2019 illustrates the difficulties of being an artist in a struggling democracy like Pakistan.
Following in the footsteps of other major cities with art biennales such as Venice, Havana, Shanghai and Sharjah, the art biennale behemoth finally came to Pakistan in 2017, with both Karachi and Lahore hosting major art shows by international and Pakistani artists across the largest cities of Pakistan. The show in Karachi was hailed as a great advance for the promotion of art in the city, with thousands of visitors, including schoolchildren, being able to see world class art in Karachi’s public spaces.
Two years later, the Karachi Biennale returned, but was marred by controversy almost as soon as it opened on October 28th. Law enforcement arrived at an exhibit by Pakistani artist Adeela Suleman and shut it down because it touched on a political subject: the extrajudicial killings of 444 people overseen by a controversial police officer who had escaped censure because of his political connections.
The forced closure of Adeela Suleman’s exhibit at the Karachi Biennale was a difficult situation for the artist and the organizers of the Karachi Biennale. The organizers released a statement afterwards that stated Suleman’s exhibit did not match the Biennale’s theme of…
