Material responses to anxious ecologies were at the centre of the recently concluded Lahore Biennale, Of Mountains and Seas, which mapped the reflections of 60 local and international artists across 10 key historical sites in Lahore. The third edition of the biennale, curated by John Tain, ran from October 05 - November 08, 2024.

Of Mountains and Seas alluded to a wider topographical scope and an engagement with ecological emergencies that persist within and beyond the city of Lahore. In his curatorial note, Tain referred to the thematic axis of the Lahore Biennale, “…the vernacular culture found in the architecture and craft traditions from the Global South suggests ways that history offers resources for imagining sustainable futures. In doing so, the biennale not only highlights the rich culture of Lahore and Pakistan, its human side, but also suggests how societies across [the] Global South, rather than rely on the actions of industrialised nations, can take agency and contribute to global conversations on climate futures by reconnecting with local and Indigenous cultures, as resources.”

This call for collective response is timely. Lahore is choking. Annually, the haze that smothers it also mutates the city to hold the lenticular effect of a site that is both the romantic capital of culture and gardens and a polluted metropolis. The curatorial ambit of the biennale was articulated through its site specificity; particularly because these sites referenced histories that ranged from the culturally significant (the Lahore Fort) to quieter, forgotten spaces of historical descent and activism (Bradlaugh Hall). The chemistry of the works in their considered locations prompted reminders that ancient technologies can serve as contemporary solutions. In the gardens of Nasir Bagh, a community park in downtown Lahore, INLAND’s (Fernando Garcia Dory, Sergio Bravo) Crossroads Tamboo (2024) was an outdoor architectural installation that explored the convergence of bee-keeping and pastoralist practices in Pakistan and Central Asia as a community-led solution. Other displays explored anxieties around disrupted ecologies amplified by climate emergencies.

Works like Jennifer Tee’s Ancestral Structure, Deep Life (2024) and Imran Qureshi’s Water Bodies (2024) displayed at the Shalimar Gardens—a series of sprawling mid 17th century Mughal pleasure gardens, now in the heart of a commercial district—hinted at a copacetic relationship between natural and urban environments. Situated in the Lahore Fort, Ali Kazim’s Ruins (2024) explored the ruinous consequences of climate change through the tacit mapping of ancient geographies onto current topographies. In this large-scale triptych, an arid terrain unfolds, referencing an unexcavated section of the archaeological site of Harappa. Once the centre of civilisation, the muted and precise graphite-rendered landscape features only scorched soil and sky. Adjacent to this drawing, a terracotta sculpture serves as the solitary representation of a human footprint in the form of a damaged human heart, crafted from broken earthen shards that have been (partially) reconstructed. Clay here, becomes a metaphor for both flesh and the ephemerality of human life and its accoutrements and that nature is a sublime force that births and then buries life back into itself – the earth. 

Like in Kazim’s work, the preoccupation with the notion of earth and earth as motif and material featured frequently across the biennale. In Hamra Abbas’ Aerial Studies (2024), situated in the far corner of the Shalimar Gardens, 11 sizable and meticulously crafted pietra dura panels granted the viewer panoptic views of the three monumental mountain ranges in Gilgit-Baltistan. The limited use of white marble inlay in the starkly monochromatic landscapes raised the alarm about shrinking snow caps, bringing to light the vulnerability of this seemingly implacable and ancient topography.

A bijou garden that obliquely echoed the Persian charbagh stood along Lahore’s congested downtown broadway, the Mall Road. This was a portion of Usman Saeed’s whimsical Bagh-e Noor Jahan (The Garden of Noor Jahan, 2024), imagined as a triad of community gardens, collectively resembling a Sarus Crane when viewed from above. It is an act of reclamation, birthing microhabitats that will continue to grow long after other displays are dismantled. In Karim Ahmed Khan’s Still Life (2024) a single ravaged sea buckthorn branch rendered in charcoal was an austere meditation on the effects of the environmental crisis as witnessed by his community in Hunza.

Community action was at the heart of Tomás Saraceno’s monumental Museo Aero Solar(2024). Made in collaboration with the Fine Arts Department at Kinnaird College for Women, inscriptive patch-worked plastic bags are both the structure and surface of this ‘inflatable museum’. Displayed in the newly restored colonial period Bradlaugh Hall—historically emblematic of community and resistance—the work echoed the power of collective action. This was also evident in Dryden Goodwin’s video projection, Breathe: Lahore (2024), which is a rapidly looped sequence of graphite portraits of air pollution campaigners, gasping for breath. Elements of nature as subtext and motif—here, air as a shared resource and rubric of a quality life—flowed through the biennale, providing useful thematic anchoring across these sites, especially for general visitors who may have found certain works more abstract than others. Ehsan ul Haq and Iqra Tanveer’s Memory Orbits (2024) was an expansive multimedia installation featuring ceramic sculptures, light projections and pressed flowers. Situated in an abandoned underground shelter which is now the Nasir Bagh Barracks Museum, the bunker’s white rotund interiors amplify their material reflections on cyclicality; celestial rhythms and the quiet resilience of nature. Eclipses are embodied as unions through light projections, enigmatic animal-like sculptures in conversation with a video projection of an abandoned Karachi zoo now populated with dense overgrowth. The works as a collective were a contemplation of the natural sublime and that we are all ephemera.

The biennale’s engagement with migration and labour within the scope of climate emergencies was limited but thankfully not ignored. Zheng Bo’s Phoenix (2024) examined climate-induced migrations of farmers from Pakistan to the UAE. The work was a playful acknowledgement of subaltern communities that carry a fundamental and intergenerational understanding of vernacular agriculture. Soil and labour were at the centre of Nida Rehman and Hira Nabi’s collaboration, Mitti, Mazdoori, Mahaul, (2024). Directly translated as ‘Soil, Labour and Environment’, this installation was underpinned by a technical architectural examination of Lahore’s urban transformation. The installation involved a detailed layering of visuals through photographic works; maps and soil, with soil as a recurring motif in its multiple iterations (mounds, bricks). Rehman and Nabi unravelled intersectional relationships between the city, its builders and its caregivers. In their artist statement, Rehman and Nabi assert: “Soils carry histories, memories and testimonies, which speak of colonial erasures but also of care and resistance.” The considered cartographic quality of their work seeks to map the city with the humblest of materials - the soil on which it stands.

The biennale’s programming was further augmented by collateral exhibits, commencing its cycle with a climate crisis conference. The Soil is Still Moist at the Shahi Hammam curated by Mariam Hanif Khan, Knowledge of the Ancients curated by Zahra Khan at Barkat Ali Islamia Hall and Zenana Act 2 curated by Imran Ahmad and Saamia Vine all showcased a diverse representation of artists and broadened the range of exhibition areas within the city.

This edition of the Lahore Biennale was both cohesive and cautious. Of Mountains and Seas swam close to the shore, situating itself firmly in the historical locations of the city. It may have served as a novel experiment to have included less atmospheric, more contemporary and community-centric spaces across Lahore among the exhibition venues. Residents of the Global South, like Pakistan, are at the frontlines of the climate crisis, without proportionate access to technologies or resources to adjust to their changing environments. Fundamentally, the Lahore Biennale’s centring on climate emergencies allowed for intersectional responses and explorations around the material and natural worlds we occupy.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position of STIR or its editors.)

‘Of Mountains and Seas’, Lahore Biennale ran from October 05, 2024 - November 08, 2024.