Life in Ruins

Materiality, the City, and the Production of Critique in the Art of Naiza Khan

Bibliographic Data

ID3614218
AuthorsKarin Zitzewitz (0000-0003-4851-8143, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume74
Issue2
Pages323-346
Publication date2015-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-9118 • E-ISSN: 1752-0401
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1017/s0021911814002228
OpenAlexW2312426862
LanguageEN
References cited23

Naiza Khan'sThe Manora Archive(2007-), the product of her long-term engagement with a small island in Karachi's harbor, is exemplary of both Pakistan's vibrant contemporary art and its burgeoning discourse of urban space. Dominated by a naval base and port rejuvenation project, nearly all of Manora's civilian population was bought out by investors in 2006 for a now-abandoned real estate development. Khan has recorded the island's abandoned architecture in photographs and video, documenting its descent into ruins. Her visual archive, which also includes drawings, prints, and paintings based on the photographs, presents Manora's ruins as metonymic of Karachi's colonial and postcolonial histories. This article makes two interlocking claims: first, that Khan's artistic work supplements scholarship on the relationship between violence and urban development by highlighting issues of temporality and bodily experience, and, second, that her work productively exploits the tension between the documentary mode and more traditional artistic media

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Colonialism · Heterotopia (medicine) · Materiality (auditing) · Painting · Scholarship · Sociology · Temporality · Visual arts · Visual culture · Architecture · History · Law · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East · South Asian Cinema and Culture · South Asian Studies and Conflicts

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