Urbanities – art and public space in Pakistan

Urbanities – art and public space in Pakistan is a critical exploration of the urban, its complexities and possibilities under the premise of individual artistic work and research approaches. Throughout 2016, the partner project between the Goethe- Institut Pakistan and the Lahore Biennale Foundation, in collaboration with Vasl Artists’ Collective, Annemarie-Schimmel-Haus, Marvi Mazhar & Associates, and other partners, incited discursive and artistic contributions related to Pakistan’s controversial and contested urban space. By recollecting Henri Lefebvre’s “right to the city” for critical discussion, the project aimed to enable a broad audience to engage with contemporary art and urban space, and to link the emerging generation of artists, curators and urban researchers in Pakistan with the scenes in Germany within the broader framework of the curatorial processes leading up to the Lahore Biennale.