An exhibit at Karachi Biennale was forcibly shut down. Does public art not belong to the public in Pakistan?

On Sunday morning, a much awaited city wide art event awakened after its scheduled slumber, on seven curated sites across Karachi.

The Karachi Biennale, in its second iteration, seemed to make a comeback grounded in a thematic - Ecology and the Environment - that appeared surprisingly contemporary and accessible in its packaging. Many hoped the two year break between the biennales had allowed for the organisers to contemplate a decolonisation of lens, language and approach.

A few hours into the opening, however, one of the sites was unfortunately 'colonised' by the kind of men you usually imagine to be behind most state-enforced censorship in Pakistan.

The events that have unfolded since that most violent intervention, have been difficult to process. This is my attempt at deconstructing, contextualising, and finding a way to center the conversation in the political realities that it is an unfortunate consequence of.

The cause of the 'intervention' was an art exhibit that drew attention to the sins of a man whose name we're now all-too-familiar with. Rao Anwar, an ex-policeman, and 'encounter specialist' has been accused of being involved in the murders of 444 people. He was suspended from the police force, after the death of one of his victims gained national prominence and caused countrywide protests.

A police inquiry revealed that Anwar, our state-vetted 'encounter specialist' had staged a 'fake encounter' which resulted in the death of a popular Pashtun model, Naqeebullah Mehsud.

After extra-judicially killing Mehsud, Anwar had attempted to paint the murder as a successful elimination of a 'terrorist', a false claim which sparked outrage across the country and gave momentum to the emerging Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM).

Amongst other things, PTM, much to the chagrin of state institutions, demanded an end to unlawful disappearances and murders of Pashtuns based on a pattern of ethnic profiling, unfolding against the backdrop of an unending war on 'terror'.

An attack on artistic freedom or something even more sinister?

Artist Adeela Suleman, decided to use the platform of Karachi Biennale to draw focus to this important conversation - a conversation, and a political struggle which has been subject to immense censorship, intimidation and oppression. Her exhibit, housed in Frere Hall, consisted of graves - 444 graves to be exact, each marking a body.

The installation, titled 'Killing fields of Karachi' was accompanied by a short documentary, featuring the father of Mehsud, whose murder Anwar has been accused of.

The documentary accompanying Suleman's exhibit featured Naqeebullah Mehsud's father. -Photo credits: Mohsin Sayeed

A few hours into its opening, a portion of the exhibit was sealed shut by the powers that be. The portion they managed to seal was in a lower gallery of Frere Hall - a room which could be padlocked shut. The other half of the installation was outdoors, and as it could not be 'sealed' away in quite the same way, it was temporarily left intact.

Read: Rao Anwar and the killing fields of Karachi

As the news spread on social media, a...