The radioactive decade

You don’t know if you will be horrified or delighted as you turn a corner in the Amin Gulgee gallery. The space has an exciting terrain, and the change in light, temperature and altitude heighten the experience. Upstairs, outside, under the clouds or the stairs, or marching with sari and rifle, the art is fluid and overflowing. To see “The 70’s: Pakistan’s Radioactive Decade” is to return to an unimaginable, confusing place where cabaret and kathak ruled, martial law loomed, and a country was amputated wordlessly. Curated by Niilofur Farrukh and Amin Gulgee, the 40-artist show is a celebration, discussion and lament.

One military-looking Vajdaan Shah barks “Comrade!” handing you a slip of Shah Abdul Bhitai’s poetry with a crisp “lal salaam”.  The main gallery pulsates. In the centre, Muhammad Ali’s ethereal tank made of 9000 plastic daisies seems to float. Samra Roohi’s lenticular print “The Conservative Liberals” changes the attire of two girls smiling in the sun to burkas as you move past it. Sunil Shankar flutters about - beard, sari, boots and gun - in homage to the rebel Bengali women taking to the streets in white clothes. A small crowd gathers around Tapu Javeri’s cut-out of 70’s icon Mawla Jutt. They are taking pictures and Javeri is disappointed - he wanted selfies.  You could easily miss artist Talal Faisal languishing on the ground, a desolate figure camouflaging his body with an “invalid” stamp. Anwar Saeed’s figures are painted in a landscape of 70’s icons and milestones. The spectacle is being observed by a jewelled Sara Pagganwalla, perched precariously, a bride watching from the ceiling. Battling vertigo and a fear of heights, her performance, “Limbo” alludes to the fight for perfection.

Then there is Meher Afroz, empress of restraint. Her “Memories from the 70s” has the intimacy of a whisper. 5 diary-like structures lie open bearing witness. The books have her signature murky surfaces and sensitivity. One marks the crossing of what she calls an “aag ka darya” for a country. Another has Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s famous chant roti, kapra, makan (bread, clothes and housing), the hope, the promise - only to end with a noose. And then the loss of Pakistan’s other half, which she depicts poetically on opposite pages of one book. Miniature oval boxes open to read Hum idhar, (We are here) and Tum udhar (You are there) for the lost sister country, the book’s spine suggesting miles and a violent severance. The last book is embedded with three jewelled boxes, housing, in green calligraphy what we have lost: Jinnah’s famous ‘unity, faith and discipline’.

There were no price tags and the show was conceived as a means to ask questions and create discussion. Artist Ali Junejo, who’s performance “A night at the Bar” features him and Osama Tahir lounging and drinking in dhotis and Lucknawi pajamas, was grateful for the artistic freedom the show offered. The curators were also keen to point out that the artists of the 70’s never alluded to the creation of Bangladesh. As evidence, the gallery was dotted with the masters - Sadequain, Bashir Mirza, Jamil Naqsh, Ahmed Parwaiz and Ismail Gulgee.  According to Niilofur Farrukh, their counterparts in East Pakistan however, responded to their independence with violent themes of emancipation - “it was cathartic to them.”

Contrastingly another voice present from that decade was Jamil Dehlavi. His piece, Zuljanah was from his 70’s film “The Blood of Hussain” that challenged and irked the military. Comparing the tyranny of Yazid and his forces with Pakistan’s military dictators, Dehlavi found himself with an impounded passport and a banned film. Zuljanah alludes to the Prophet (PBUH)’s grandson Imam Hussein’s valiant stallion, and in a sequence of images, rises majestically from the sands to continue the struggle against oppression. Within the boisterousness of the gallery, this piece reminds you of a sinister time.

General Zia, Babra Sharif and Bata shoes jostle higgledy-piggledy

For Sheherbano Hussain, the darkness was in the background. In “Dissonant Disco”, the 70’s was swirling with film and fun. Muhammad Zeeshan combines the themes in “I’m a Little Wiser Now”, his piece draws from Johnny Walker’s tagline in the 50’s “Samajhdar logon ki whiskey”, and the ban on such beverages in the 70’s. A sin, he says, has been converted into a crime.  Adeel uz Zafar’s painstaking “Autopsy” features a sleek Morris Minor from 1962, with auto entrails arranged like a table setting on the facing wall. He is passionate about the handsome car and the transformations it has experienced under the influence of time and local mechanics.

The downside of this extravaganza was the aural pieces, which were lost in the din of the gallery. Aside from Haamid Rahim’s Khabarnama which warms the waters as you walk through the gallery’s gates (good old PTV news and tooth powder ads), most pieces accompanied by headphones left you straining to hear.

The curators emphasised that great Pakistani artists of the 70's never alluded to the creation of Bangladesh

Towers made from 100 copies of the 1973 Pakistan Constitution form an installation by Niilofur Farrukh. “We got a lot out of the 70’s,” she says, “and this is one tangible thing”. Visitors could leave the show with a copy. Akram Dost Baloch’s piece is a grid with animals and natural objects, and visitors could smear their own blood, or erase images with paint. In the gallery’s darker spaces, a quirky state television inspired installation by Aamir Habib showcases films exploring identity by R.M. Naeem and Babar Sheikh, while a sari-clad Angeline Malik sits snipping at reels of film, a nudge at a stricter, meaner censor board. Outside, a vintage radio plays Bangladeshi nationalist songs in Yaminay N. Chaudri’s audio piece; next to it “Cabaret girls” Joshinder Chaggar and Erum Bashir, shimmy and shine in their boudoir.

Entering Omar Wasim’s haunting installation, claustrophobia and fear grip you - it is a tiny room made of cinder blocks, a self-described “chawkidar ka karma”. The only light sources are the illuminated floor panels, covered with handwriting and debris. Reading the tumble of words under nails and dust, you realise you are in someone’s mind: these are memories from Wasim’s father. Surrounded by murder and fear, he took the last flight from Chittagong in November 1971; his own father was jailed in Bangladesh and eventually died. When Wasim’s grandmother finally came to Karachi without a husband or home, she was a makeshift, shattered person. The piece discusses inherited generational memory and it stays with you even when you exit its small frame.

Climbing the stairs in the middle of the gallery, the view of the swirling banquet below gives you a false sense of perspective soon destroyed by Beenish Muhammad’s piece. In the cool room upstairs, General Zia, Babra Sharif and Bata shoes jostle higgledy-piggledy in this archival film. This is the 70’s, Naheed Siddiqui seems to say as she pirouettes, earrings swinging, eyes twinkling. No, this is the 70’s, the man says - announcing martial law. No, this is the 70’s, the belly dancer winks from a poster, no, this is the 70’s: INDIAN ARMY MAKES GAINS, the headline screams; the tummy-baring model says this is the 70’s, and Alamgir agrees smiling, and the newspaper says B is for Barbara, but then it says “The Damned art of dancing”; no, this is the 70’s: Nazia Hassan sings her sweet, happy song, and the paper says DHAKA HAS FALLEN, and the Jackie O-like PIA girls wave.

“At the end,” Amin Gulgee says, “you feel strange and wonderful, you don’t know how you feel”. Perhaps that is the best way to describe the decade.

Zehra Hamdani is based in Karachi