Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, a recipient of several Emmys and two Academy Awards, is constantly working to improve the shape of things. But before that, a bit about the terrific year she’s having.
CultureVulture
Set to premiere at the Manchester International Festival 2017 next month, the exhibition contains refugee narratives in the form of photography, short documentaries and installations.
Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, a recipient of several Emmys and two Academy Awards, is constantly working to improve the shape of things. But before that, a bit about the terrific year she’s having.
In January 2017, she became the first artist to Co-Chair the 47th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Switzerland. In March of this year, on the International’s Women’s Day, she launched a campaign called Aagahi – Apnay Mustaqbil Ki in collaboration with the Women’s Action Forum in Karachi. She represented Pakistan at the 8th annual Women in the World Summit in April 2017 while in May, SOC was awarded the prestigious Knight International Journalism Award 2017 and the Best International Television Award at 49th Annual Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards. Her interactive community engagement project ‘SOC Outreach’ was launched just this month.
SOC’s latest effort is an immersive experiential exhibition, titled HOME1947 which will premiere at the Manchester International Festival 2017 next month. The first such exhibit from the acclaimed filmmaker, it is a collection of stories from people “who left their homes and crossed borders during the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent”.
Beginning on the 1st of July, the display will go on till July 9 and will include “a walkway featuring short documentaries, audio clips, written material along with a grand collection of photographs, illustrated art, oral histories, the insides of abandoned havelis, a 360 degree experience and historical material.”
The timing of this exhibit is also pertinent. “HOME1947 shows the audience, partition not through the words of historians and politicians, but through the eyes of those who lived through it.”
For this exhibit, Chinoy collaborated with The Citizens Archive of Pakistan, The Partition Museum, Townhall, Amritsar and with Kamal Khan of Gali Films, Ahsan Bari, Taha Malik, Ali Asghar Alavi and Mobeen Ansari. Other contributors from SOC Films include Aleeha Badat, Huda Tufail, Safyah Usmani, Faizan Ali, Nadir Siddiqui, Mishaal Adhami, Khurram Victor, Murtaza Ali, Husain Qaizar, Sijal Rehmane and Wasif Arshad.
As a celebration of the opening of this exhibit, the Manchester International Festival 2017 will be hosting a night of Sufi music which will see Sanam Marvi from Pakistan and Harshdeep Kaur from India take the stage.
Speaking about the exhibit, Chinoy said in a statement: “I grew up listening to my grandparents’ stories about childhood homes they left behind, the smell of the earth when it rained, the fragrance of Jasmine in the spring, the friendships the longed to rekindle, the mango trees under which they played – Home 1947 is my ode to that generation.”
