Syed Ammad Tahir

Born in 1986 in Karachi (Pakistan)
Lives and works in Karachi (Pakistan)

Syed Ammad Tahir graduated from the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture in 2008 with a Bachelor’s in Fine Art. He has had one solo exhibition at the Goethe-Institut, Karachi and has participated in several group exhibitions in Pakistan and abroad including “And Nothing but the Truth: the Problem of Parrhesia,” curated by Zarmeené Shah at Koel Gallery, Karachi, as well as several performance-based exhibitions at the Amin Gulgee Gallery, Karachi. His work was nominated for the Rangoonwala Thesis Scholarship and the Zahoor ul Akhlaque Drawing Portfolio Award. Tahir reviews exhibitions and regularly writes for the Herald (Pakistan). He has taught drawing in the Department of Fine Art at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture from 2009 – 2012, and at Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s Institute of Science and Technology from 2010 – 2014, and taught History of Art at the Textile Institute of Pakistan in 2012. He is now a Lecturer in the Department of Communication Design at IVS. Tahir was recently nominated as an exchange scholar by the US State Department to teach drawing and 2D Design at Kennesaw State University, Atlanta, USA.

Of his work for KB17, Syed Ammad Tahir writes: “Talk to Me is a performance work which will take place in real-time at one of the venues of the Karachi Biennale through live streaming of the performance via laptop and a projector/LCD screen. The artist will be streaming from an unknown location for three hours and will remain open to answering non-scripted questions by the audience during the entire stream of the performance. The performance relives the moments of cyber chat that I had with strangers during my teenage years and will allow the strangers / audience visiting the biennale to become part of my virtual fantasy.”