KARACHI BIENNALE 2022
For the Karachi Biennale 2022 I worked with the Shahnama, The Book of Kings, a 1000 year old Iranian poetry epic. It is the oldest book they had around in the school library of the NJV High School where my work is exhibited. You activate the work by scanning the illustration of Zarathustra from the book with the Simurgh App developed by me. The magical bird Simurgh appears and guides you on a trail outside the school building to three paintings that activate more AR paintings depicting stories from the Shahnama: 1. Simurgh appears 2. Rostam meets Tahmine (they will never meet again but she will have his child: Zohrab.) 3. Rostam kills Zohrab his own son without knowing only realizing it afterwards 4. Zahaak, an evil king who made a deal with the devil and subsequently had two snakes growing out of his shoulders. The snakes had to be fed with brains of young children. So every day two families had to sacrifice a child. He wasn’t very popular as a king. This whole work wouldn’t have come to life without the curatorial guidance of Faisal Anwar and his team. Kindly supported by the GOETHE-INSTITUT Pakistan.