Yaminay N. Chaudhri

Born in 1979 in Karachi (Pakistan)
Lives and works between Karachi and Guilford, CT (USA)

Yaminay N. Chaudhri has a degree in architecture from Cornell University and worked as an architect for six years before making a career switch. She got her MFA in combined media studio arts from State University of New York at Albany and then moved back to Karachi where she established the Tentative Collective in 2011. Since then, she has been making work collaboratively as well as on her own, focusing on digital media and socially engaged practice. She has attended the Vermont Studio Centre and Jentel artist residencies. Her individual and collaborative work have been shown in various museums, galleries and festivals internationally including Gandhara Artspace (Karachi), Twelve Gates Arts (Philadelphia), University Art Museum (Albany), Kunstraum Bethanien (Berlin), Syracuse International Film Festival, Digital Marrakech Festival, City Possible Film Festival (Singapore), IAWRT Asian Women's Film Festival (New Delhi), among others.

Yaminay N. Cahudhri’s submissions for KB17 include a 7-minute video, salvaged text from real estate advertisements, and a series of digital prints entitled “What is separation's geography? Everything is just that mystery." Of her prints, one of which is pictured here, the artist states: “The title of this series of prints comes from a book of poems by Agha Shahid Ali, Rooms Are Never Finished. It conjures up the viscerality of separation and distance from home, from the perspective of a poet in exile. In the context of this series of prints, the separation referred to is more local but the implied distance may be as vast. Before the viewer are profiles of large suburban homes filled with the textures and details of their walls. Floating in fields of white, the flattening of these homes and removal from their original contexts offer meditations on distance, separation, and perspectives of living in Karachi.”

Yasser Vayani/Veera Rustomji/Hira Khan/Ammara Jabbar

Yasser Vayani (b. 1992, Nairobi, Kenya) is a graduate of Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture (IVS), Department of Fine Arts. Some of his selected exhibitions include a site-specific group show, 'Up, Down, Inside and Out' at The Jamshed Memorial School, Karachi, in 2014, ‘Origins’ at VM Art Gallery, Karachi, in 2015, Yasser was also selected to create an installation in Budapest, Hungary for the Sziget Festival in 2015. He recently had his first solo show at the IVS Gallery titled 'Drawing (im)possibilities’, in 2016. He has participated as a resident artist for the Koel Gallery’s January 2017 ‘Open Studio Residency’ and been a resident artist at The Creative Center, Stöðvarfjörður, Iceland, Saari Art Residency, Mynämäki, Finland. Hira Khan (b. 1993, Karachi, Pakistan) is a practicing visual artist and a Research Coordinator at the Vasl Artists’ Association. Hira completed her Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art in 2015 from the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi. She has displayed her work at VM Art Gallery, the Karachi Literature Festival 2016 with Canvas Gallery and at Koel Gallery as part of the Mandarjazail Collective exhibition titled ‘Excerpts’. She was an artist in residence at the Hollows’ Artspace, in New York, USA, 2017. Veera Rustomji (b. 1992, Karachi, Pakistan) is a visual artist and writer based in Karachi, Pakistan. She graduated in 2015 from the Department of Fine Art of the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture. A recipient of the Rangoonwala Trust Academic Scholarship, she continues to conduct research for her practice that is driven by her interest in the parallel dialogues of migration and heritage. At present, she is working as an assistant coordinator for Vasl Artists’ Association and pursues freelance writing with numerous publications. Veera has displayed her work within Pakistan and was an artist in residence for the 2017 Murree Museum Artists' Residency. Ammara Jabbar (b. 1992, Karachi, Pakistan) is a graduate of the Department of Fine Art of the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture. She was selected for the Gasworks Residency UK, in 2016 and has displayed her work within Pakistan and the UK. Ammara's interests meander within the aesthetics of dialect and language, in terms of script and the general denominators of masculinity and femininity in the Urdu language.

The artists write of their installation of discarded sofas for KB17: “‘Junk’ is a relative term as it implies the terminal end of an object or a process which cannot be revitalized or has no secondary purpose. We are interested in the personification of these items of furniture using materials found from the site in order to readdress what the human mind categorizes as junk. Art can be seen as an extension of people as all human identities are shaped by the space in which they live and socialize. Past identities are bound to the geographies of multiple places. Found material can be viewed as a common base for expressing and sharing thoughts and ideas about connecting to communities and understanding traditions….we aim to individually bring new purposes to the ‘junkyard’.”

Yoko Ono

Born in 1933 in Tokyo (Japan)
Lives and works in Nutopia

Yoko Ono is an artist whose thought-provoking work challenges people’s understanding of art and the world around them. From the beginning of her career, she was a Conceptualist whose work encompassed performance, instructions, film, music, and writing.

Ono was born in Tokyo in 1933, and moved to New York in 1953, following her studies in philosophy in Japan. By the late 1950s, she had become part of New York Cityʼs vibrant avant-garde activities. In 1960, she opened her Chambers Street loft, where she and La Monte Young presented a series of radical performances and exhibited realizations of some of her early conceptual works. In 1961, she had a one- person show of her Instruction Paintings at George Maciunas’ legendary AG Gallery in New York, and later that year, she performed a solo concert at Carnegie Recital Hall of revolutionary works involving movement, sound, and voice. In 1962, she returned to Tokyo, where, at the Sogetsu Art Center, she extended her New York performance and exhibited her Instructions for Paintings. In 1964, Ono performed Cut Piece in Kyoto and Tokyo, and published Grapefruit, a book of her collected conceptual instruction pieces. At the end of that year, she returned to New York. In 1965, she performed Cut Piece during her concert at Carnegie Recital Hall, Bag Piece during a solo event for the Perpetual Fluxus Festival, and she performed Sky Piece to Jesus Christ during the Fluxorchestra concert at Carnegie Recital Hall that September. In 1966, she made the first version of Film No. 4 (Bottoms), and realized a collaborative installation The Stone, at the Judson Gallery. In the fall of 1966, she was invited to take part in the Destruction in Art Symposium in London, and later that year, held one-person exhibitions at the Indica Gallery, and the Lisson Gallery the following year. During this period, she also performed a number of concerts throughout England. In 1969, together with John Lennon, she realized Bed-In, and the worldwide War Is Over! (if you want it) campaign for peace. Ono has made a number of films, including Fly and Rape, and many records, including Fly, Approximately Infinite Universe, Rising, and Between My Head and the Sky. She has had numerous exhibitions in museums throughout the world, including traveling exhibitions organized by the Museum of Modern Art Oxford and the Japan Society in New York. In 2009, she exhibited ANTONʼS MEMORY at the Bevilacqua Foundation in Venice, and received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement from the Venice Biennale. Among numerous recent exhibitions, in 2010, she exhibited IʼLL BE BACK at the Studio Stefania Miscetti in Rome, and DAS GIFT at the Haunch of Venison in Berlin. In 2011, she showed participatory installation pieces at the Wanås Foundation in Sweden, and the Yokohama Triennale, and held four one-person exhibitions in Tokyo, New York, and Hiroshima, including Road of Hope—Yoko Ono 2011 at the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, where she was honored with the prestigious 8th Hiroshima Art Prize for her dedicated peace activism. In 2013, YOKO ONO: HALF-A-WIND SHOW – A RETROSPECTIVE opened at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, which then traveled to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, Kunsthalle Krems in Austria, and Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain. YOKO ONO: ONE WOMAN SHOW, 1960-1971 opened at The Museum of Modern Art in New York in May 2015. In the fall of 2015, Ono had one-person exhibitions at Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (MOT) and the FAURSCHOU FOUNDATION BEIJING, as well as a major retrospective at MAC Lyon in France. In October 2016, Ono unveiled her permanent installation SKYLANDING in Chicago’s Jackson Park, and her one-person exhibition at the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki, Greece, was warmly received. Currently, Ono’s work is featured at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC in her exhibition YOKO ONO: Four Works for Washington and the World. Three of her installations will be running concurrently in Venice: MIRROR IMAGE at Palazzo Mora, ‘EX IT Destruction’ at Palazzo Michiel, and INVISIBLE PEOPLE on the Lido. Other current and upcoming exhibitions include her one-person exhibition YOKO ONO: VOICE OF A WOMAN at Galerie Ziegler, Zurich, and a group exhibition Duet with Artist. Participation as Artistic Principle at Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany, which then travels to 21her Haus in Vienna. In 2007, she created the permanent installation IMAGINE PEACE TOWER on Viðey Island, Iceland, and continues to work tirelessly for peace with her IMAGINE PEACE campaign.

 

ONOCHORD

 

Send the ONOCHORD message:

 

“I LOVE YOU”

 

by repeatedly blinking the light

in the frequencies and durations

required for the message:

 

from ships

from the top of the mountains

from buildings

using whole buildings

in town squares

from the sky

and to the sky.

 

Keep sending the message

until the end of the year

and beyond.

Keep sending the message

everywhere on the earth

and to the universe

keep sending.

 

For individuals:

send the message by hand

or using flashlights

or with lighters

 

The message I LOVE YOU in ONOCHORD is:

 

I             i

LOVE    ii

YOU      iii

 

I love you !

 

yoko ono  2004

Zahid Mayo

Born in 1987 in Alipur Chatha (Pakistan)
Lives and works in Lahore (Pakistan)

Zahid Mayo was born in Alipur Chatha, a small town in Punjab, and moved with his family to the farming village of Madrassa Chatha when he was four years old. He started school there and learned calligraphy from the Takhti system that used to prevail in rural Punjab. Later on, his interest developed in drawing and poetry. The walls of the village were his early surfaces; pieces of chalk from school and left over bits of coal were his first materials. He moved to Lahore in 2005 to study art and, after graduating from the National College of Arts, began his career as an artist. His works can be seen in galleries and also in random places like trees, parks, roadsides, sometimes even on human bodies. 

Zahid Mayo states of his practice: “I am a storyteller and I believe that stories need not always be structured from words. I want to narrate stories through a visual form…I am a witness to those countless eyes who embarrass my own vision and to those faces that become an imprint on my subconscious. I am not able to face them directly so, with the help of my photography and sketch book, I let go of my subconscious. I cover my subject in the garb of traditional visual depiction to express my narrative onto the canvas.”

Zayed Malik

Born in 1991 in Lahore (Pakistan)
Lives and works in Lahore (Pakistan)

Zayed Malik is a performance artist based in Lahore. His work explores the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind. Malik graduated from Beaconhouse National University, Lahore in 2014. He has exhibited at 39K Gallery, Lahore, amongst others, and participated in the Venice Experimental Video and Performance Art Festival in 2015­­­.

Zayed Malik writes of his performance for KB17: “The work revolves around the idea of being ashamed of yourself and being witnessed by people who judge you as something disgraceful. I will be on my knees and my head will be stuck in a toilet so that I and the toilet are seen as one object. The performance will be a comment on both the performer and the audience.”

Zinnia Naqvi

Born in 1991 in Pickering, ON (Canada)
Lives and works between Toronto and Montreal (Canada)

Ziinia Naqvi received a Bachelor in Fine Arts in Photography from Ryerson University, Toronto and is currently a Master’s in Fine Arts Candidate from Concordia University, Montreal. Her work has been shown in Toronto at the Ryerson Image Centre, Gallery 44, the Koffler Gallery and in Montreal at Articule and the Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery. Her work has been shown internationally at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires, Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, Uppsala International Short Film Festival and the International Institute of Contemporary Art and Theory in Mangalia, Romania. Naqvi’s work uses a combination of photography, video, archival footage and installation. Her past work has dealt with issues of post-colonialism, trans-culturalism, language and gender politics. Using archival objects allows viewers to step back and think critically about issues that affect diasporic communities over time and place.

Dear Nani is a project that addresses issues of gender performance and colonial mimicry through the family archive. The photographs included in this project are of the artist’s maternal grandmother, Rhubab Tapal. Nani is performing the act of cross-dressing by wearing several different outfits that belong to her husband. The photographs were taken on the newly-weds’ honeymoon in Quetta and Karachi, Pakistan, in 1948. The artist’s grandfather, Gulam Abbas Tapal, is the photographer and presumed director of the photo session. 

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

Born in 1990 in Damascus (Syria)
Lives and works in San Francisco (USA)

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto is an artist, curator and performer of mixed Pakistani and Lebanese descent and spent most of his life in Karachi, Pakistan but is now based in the U.S. Bhutto has exhibited his work extensively in the United States, as well as in Colombia, Pakistan and the U.A.E. He has a degree in Art History from the University of Edinburgh and an MFA in Studio Art from the San Francisco Art Institute from where he graduated in 2016. He continues to work with galleries and institutions in San Francisco, such as Southern Exposure, SAFEHouse Arts and SOMArts.

In the works from the series Mussalmaan Musclemen on view at KB17, all images have been taken from a translation of a book supposedly originally written by Arnold Schwarzenegger, muscleman icon, actor and former governor of California. There is no true original English version as the book is a pirated mishmash of various books. This kaleidoscope of exercise manuals, alongside the Urdu translation and accompanying images of what appear to be white or white-passing men projects this book into a world of its own creation, existing neither completely in the East nor in the West. Rather, it occupies a liminal space. Bhutto explored this liminality by feminizing an otherwise ultra-masculine conversation. The artist scanned and printed these pages onto cotton fabric, blown up several times the size of the original; he then intervened by replacing hard muscle with soft flowery fabric and brightly colored embroidery thread, utilizing feminine practice to reveal the softness behind the muscle. The artist sought to create his own version of masculinity, making new men out of old ones and satirising the very serious and robust pride behind bodybuilding by inserting elements of humor and playfulness into it.