Artist Presentation and Open Discussion with Raqs Media Collective, Shahana Rajani and Zahra Malkani

On Tuesday, 12th March Khoj organised artist presentations and an open discussion with artists Raqs Media Collective and Karachi LaJamia (joining on zoom).

The artists spoke about their projects as part of the 28° North and Parallel Weathers exhibition.

The exhibition was a culmination of Khoj’s two-year-long weather reporting project, as part of the World Weather Network — a coalition of 28 arts organisations from around the world formed in response to our collective climate condition to amplify the understanding of weather and connect artists and their lived experiences of weather.

The discussion was followed by a game night with board games on ecology, policy and climate change, to mark the closing of the exhibition.

Raqs Media Collective

Raqs Media Collective was formed in 1992 in Delhi. Raqs expresses a mode of ‘kinetic contemplation’ with a restless entanglement with the world, and with time. Raqs enlists objects such as an early-modern tiger-automata from Southern India, or a biscuit from the Paris Commune, or a cup salvaged from an ancient Mediterranean shipwreck, to turn them into devices to sniff and taste time. Devices are deployed thus in order to undertake historical subterfuge and philosophical queries. Raqs practices across several media; making installation, sculpture, video, performance, text, lexica and curation. In 2001, they co-founded the Sarai program at CSDS New Delhi and ran it for a decade, where they also edited the Sarai Reader series. They were the Artistic Directors for the Yokohama Triennale 2020, “Afterglow”, where they developed sources around toxicity, care, and the luminosity of friendship.

Shahana Rajani

Shahana Rajani is an artist and curator based in Karachi. Her recent work focuses on tracing the erasures and violences inherent in urban development and displacement. Using interdisciplinary methods and media, her practice explores the spatial politics of Karachi’s exclusionary geographies. She is a co-founder of the Karachi Art Anti-University and currently teaches at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture and Karachi University.

Zahra Malkani

Zahra Malkani is a multidisciplinary artist and Assistant Professor of Practice in communication and design at the Habib University in Karachi. Her practice spans multiple media including text, video, and web, and explores the politics of development, infrastructure, and militarism in Pakistan. Together with Shahana Rajani she is the co-founder of Karachi LaJamia, an experimental pedagogical project established in 2015.

Commissioned by Khoj International Artists’ Association. Khoj's participation in World Weather Network is supported by the British Council’s Creative Commissions for Climate Action, a global programme exploring climate change through art, science and digital technology.

Part of the weather station: 28th North Parallel - find out more here.