22 October – 5 November 2017
Narayan Jagannath Vaidya (NJV) High School
KB17 is Pakistan’s largest international contemporary art event that will take place every two years in Karachi. This October, over 140 artists from Pakistan and across the globe will respond to a common theme: WITNESS.
Chief curator Amin Gulgee has conceptualized KB17 exhibitions with performances, screenings, and dialogue for charting new movement through familiar spaces. KB17’s two-week long, free public exhibition at 12 venues, is an occasion to participate in an aesthetic, intellectual, and emotional survey of the city. Our collective witnessing will disrupt the limits of our spatial imagination. KB17 is an occasion to revisit our histories, rethink our present, and reimagine our future with greater optimism.
The Karachi Biennale will feature two prizes which acknowledge the most evocative exhibits in KB17: the KB17 Mahvash and Jahangir Siddiqui Foundation Juried Prize and the KB17 Shahneela and Farhan Faruqui Popular Choice Art Prize. The prizes would reflect the Karachi Biennale Trust’s sustained commitment to recognising the effort and impact of participating artists’ work as it engages with conversations around art, cities, and the act of witnessing. The trophies had been designed to capture the spirit of Karachi and interpret the thematic witness.
Over 140 artists would showcase their work at the biennale which would be open to public at 12 venues all across the city, with five on MA Jinnah Road. The artists have come from Europe, North America, South America, Africa, Southeast Asia, the Far East, and various parts of Pakistan. The works of internationally renowned artists like Yoko Ono, Shahzia Sikander, Richard Humann, Michelangelo Pistoletto, ORLAN, Bani Abedi, Meher Afroz, Miro Craemer, Bankleer, and Ruby Chishti, among others, would be on display for a large audience.
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Image: Shahzia Sikander, Disruption as Rapture, 2016. HD video animation with 7.1 surround sound. Music by Du Yun featuring Ali Sethi. Courtesy of the artist and Philadelphia Museum of Art.