Birds and cultural movement.

Byline: Peerzada Salman

KARACHI -- The artworks displayed at the Alliance Francaise de Karachi as part of the ongoing Karachi Biennale have a significant, albeit known, thread: flight.

In today's context, where globalisation has taken over and the entire world is dubbed a global village, the issue of reaching from one place to another has become all the more noteworthy. Ironically, with the kind of sociopolitical events that have been unfolding in the last few decades, displacement has reared its head as a hydra-headed problem.

Ali Kazmi's big watercolour piece 'The Conference of the Birds' (an obvious reference to Fariduddin Attar's poem) is an intelligent take on the subject. Birds have always been a potent symbol of 'freedom to move' and of quest. But it's the imagined purposelessness of their journeys that has made writers and artists look into their lives with a keen interest.

Kazimi is mindful of the mystical vein of Attar's poem, which essentially hints at unending search. Hence the birds that he's made are not directionless. What direction they're flying in is a query that's encased in a frame fraught with inconceivable answers.

British artist Alice Kettle's exhibit 'Forest' is even larger than the one discussed above, and the largeness...