Syed Yasir Husain

Born in 1971 in Karachi (Pakistan)
Lives and works in Karachi (Pakistan)

Yasir Husain is a Karachi-based artist, urban farmer and environmentalist. His artistic practice revolves around the consistent baseline of an environmental thematic, engaging with this through electronic media and new technologies. The contextual stage on which he plays out this conceptual dialogue comprises of, according to Husain: “cultural change; intellectual rubble; global, personal and social media apparatus; hyper-information; and the continuing impacts of globalisation, urbanisation and the omnipotence of the internet.” A graduate from The City University of New York and the University of Rochester (U.S.), he has participated in numerous national and international art gatherings and exhibitions, including: Colomboscope (Sri Lanka); Karachi Art Summit; Numaish Karachi; the International Symposium in Electronic Arts (UAE); Khatmandu International Arts Festival (Nepal); the Tashkent Biennale (Uzbekistan); Ars Electronica (Austria); and Transmediale (Germany). He currently operates, and is a founding member of, multiple projects in Karachi: the Mauj Collective; ArtLab, an experimental project which combines art with technology; and Organic City, which promotes environmental sustainability and ‘green living’, and through these are run various subsidiary projects, primarily educational in nature.

Implosive Karachi exemplifies Husain’s technological approach to the process of artistic creation. In a partially performative piece, he has utilised live-streaming and a 360° camera to act as a wandering witness to the frenetic and chaotic environment that is the urbanity of Karachi. The roving camera will stream its vision of the city back onto a screen at the NJV School creating a continuously shifting discourse between the viewer and the viewed; the exhibition space and the urban space; the city and the Biennale. This is furthered by the fact that the marauding live-stream shall also navigate its way around the Karachi Biennale’s other venues, creating meta-exhibitions as it traverses each space and beams back its vision, allowing for the opportunity for KB17 to have a virtual tour of its venues posted on the internet for global consumption.