Naiza Khan: Manora Field Notes

For the 58th Venice Biennale, Pakistan will present its inaugural pavilion, a solo project by the multi-disciplinary artist Naiza Khan.

Pakistan’s first ever participation is supported by the Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA) and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of Pakistan, and organised by Foundation Art Divvy.

Over the last ten years, Naiza Khan has looked at the transformations of sites such as the expanding Karachi harbour and Manora Island, foregrounding the dimensions of embodiment, ecology and habitation. Her practice is built upon a detailed process of research, documentation and mapping-based investigation of the island, looking at how this reshaping reflects wider changes in the Global South. The project Manora Field Notes, curated by Zahra Khan, will immerse the viewer in life upon Manora Island according to the artist as translator and mediator. The work engages with multiple bodies of knowledge - archival material, historic myths, conversations with local communities and architectonic phenomena such as ruins and construction sites. It constitutes an archive of lived experience and reflects the shifting power dynamics within the landscape.

Naiza Khan lives and works between Karachi, Pakistan, and London, UK. Khan trained at The Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford, and the Wimbledon College of Art, London. She is currently studying at the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London. Khan is also a Senior Advisor at the Department of Visual Studies, University of Karachi. She has exhibited internationally, including her critically acclaimed solo exhibition at the Broad Museum, Michigan (2013), the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT9), Brisbane (2018), and Hanging Fire: Contemporary Art from Pakistan at Asia Society Museum, New York (2009). Her work has also featured in major events including the Shanghai Biennale (2012) and Kochi Muziris Biennale (2016).

Zahra Khan is a curator who works with a focus on South Asian art. In her role as Curator and Director of Foundation Art Divvy, she promotes contemporary artists from Pakistan on the international art scene. Khan recently curated and organised the exhibition I, too, am a part of this history (2018) at The Fakir Khana Museum as a collateral event to the Lahore Biennale 01, and Two Wings To Fly, Not One (2017), the first museum exhibition in Pakistan of leading artists Imran Qureshi and Aisha Khalid at the National Art Gallery, PNCA, lslamabad. 

For further information, please visit pakistaninvenice.com

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