Omer Wasim

Born in 1988 in Karachi (Pakistan)
Lives and works in Karachi (Pakistan)

Omer Wasim earned his BFA in Interdisciplinary Sculpture and an MA in Critical Studies from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, USA. Wasim is a Lecturer in the Liberal Arts Programme at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi where he teaches art history, theory and criticism. He has been practicing in Karachi since 2014, and his recent collaborative works with Saira Sheikh have been shown in Pakistan, Egypt and South Korea.

Omer Wasim writes of his installation for KB17: “My works have called upon the act of witnessing and of bearing witness to an ‘unprecedented historical occurrence of […] an event eliminating its own witness.’ These works were made to attest the presence of an absent, albeit recurring, lover, and to trace the genealogies and histories of lands lost and found. For the inaugural Karachi Biennale, the work that I am proposing will bear witness to two lovers who fall in and out of love by the Indian Ocean—with broader implications on my relationship with Karachi, family histories, and our collective relationship with the ocean and its ever shifting boundaries. The work will be made using relics of companionship, and what happens when these come in contact with the ocean. The onlooker, for example, will witness how the ocean changes the hue of fabrics, and how metal reacts when it comes in contact with saline water. I am interested in exploring the material possibilities that come with living and making work in Karachi. Karachi has been a recurring geographical point of arrival and departure in my life, both conceptually and historically—it is a place that I am bound to in perpetuity. However, my relationship with Karachi is contentious at best. Are there ways to address, disrupt, revisit, and perhaps rewrite these relationships?”