A traveller stepping into a private bus bound for small cities and towns, does have the experience of a moving museum, though without being aware or conscious of it. Plastic decorations, florescent stripes, mirror works and a play of flickering lights of various hues, scale and shape could be like inside of a contemporary art space, or a new media exhibition. The reality is that these are local vehicles transporting a certain class for low fares if with high risks.

There are several reasons for decorating the interiors of our buses in such a flamboyant fashion. Most of the patterns and motifs can be traced to colonial era and the material used is linked to the history of trade, besides demonstrating the excellence of indigenous craft. But one assumes that all this elaborate scheme of adorning the belly of a fast moving bus, with uncomfortable seats, and overcrowded commuters, could be a way of diverting a passenger from his/ her immediate environment and to offer an ideal, attractive and perfect scenario.

To some extent, the tradition of beautifying houses, lighting front elevation, arranging colourful mounds made of sand or dust on road sides and lanes for religious celebration. Activities of these kinds are usually witnessed in neighbourhoods with congested, dark, small and dilapidated houses. Posh and prosperous areas generally lack enthusiasm of this type.

Imran Qureshi came across a two-storeyed narrow house in Lahore’s Riwaz Garden. During the month it was associated with interlocked lights, decorative motifs and references to religion. The entire assemblage was a composition of sacred names, pictures of Ka’ba and the green dome, bands of sacred scripts, outlines of camel carts, shapes of crescent and stars, a message in Urdu that prayer is a guarantee for entrance into the paradise, floral patterns, moving forms, waves – in attractive shades (LED and neon lights). Here was a visual strong enough to mesmerise a visual artist.

It did inspire Imran Qureshi. For his installation at the Karachi Biennale 2022, Qureshi has produced the documentation of the house he saw. In the context of Karachi, this artwork disseminates the sensation of being uprooted from one’s physical surroundings and transported to another hemisphere. It’s not just that it was originally created in Lahore for a religious purpose and is now an art piece at an international exhibition in the port city. Its formal features – like a work of abstract or contemporary art - possess the power to transpose a viewer to another realm, while remaining on a specific location.

For his installation at the Karachi Biennale 2022, Qureshi has produced the documentation of the house he saw. In the context of Karachi, this artwork disseminates the sensation of being uprooted from one’s physical surroundings and transported to another hemisphere.

The work is installed at one of the Biennale venues, the Hamid Market, where a visitor first climbs to the top floor and notices the existence of some light spilling under the door, from hinges, out of two elliptical openings, and gaps between doors and walls. Shafts of light (colour) anticipate and inform a spectator about what to expect on the lower floor.

Downstairs, Qureshi has projected the video of the Riwaz Garden house. Its front on the wall surrounded with mirrors on all sides. This method of transforming space through mirrors, is preferred by many practitioners, notably after the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. The video capturing ever-changing lights, colours, texts and shapes appears to be like being in the presence of a profound music performance, for example a qawwali, in which the audience often abandon their conscious self, and are elevated to a higher plane; facilitated by the interwoven web of rhythms.

The video projection of Imran Qureshi and the adjacent looking-glass, contribute to that other-worldly feeling, enhanced by a qawwali piece produced by the artist, with its recording played at the site. Performed by Ustad Moazzam Khan sahib, this particular piece, conceived by Imran Qureshi, sounds like a conventional qawwali, but on careful listening reveals an absence of religious content. Only the tone, composition and the singer produce the illusion of a traditional qawwali (a genre traditionally associated with sacred or devotional content; and rarely secular.).

Qureshi has converted the qawwali into a non-religious substance, while keeping its formal structure and connotations. This reminds one of Wael Shawky’s Dictum (2013) at Sharjah Biennale 11, in which the Egyptian artist appropriated the diction, composition and tradition of qawwali from north India, to compose a work comprising of discussions on curatorial processes, instead of regular spiritual poetry.

This transgression from sacred to secular in the audio piece is intriguingly evident in the original decoration from Lahore, in which one could detect multiple strands of our society coexisting simultaneously. Religious substance was constructed using equipment and technology from communist China (like prayer mats, beads and other such ritualistic stuff made in China that is brought by pilgrims in Makkah).

Hence the title of Qureshi’s installation, Deen aur Dunya (the metaphysical and physical). The artist appears to suggest a way sacred ends up being an accomplice to practical (if not profane) when it comes to the reality of this world and the other one.

(To be concluded)

The writer is an art critic based in Lahore.