Friday, January 29, 2010

Forbidden



Forbidden



Thursday, January 28, 2010
By Sumaira Jajja

Karachi

Dark and disturbing, ‘Forbidden’, an ongoing exhibit by artist Irfan Gul at the ArtChowk Gallery, is an effort that reflects the innermost feelings of a person in a time when illogical restrictions seem to give every reasonable act a negative connotation.

With ample natural light filtering in as one walks through the spacious gallery space, it’s hard to avert the eyes from the surrealistic ‘Forbidden’ series hung on the walls.

Images of the human body contorted and bundled in the foetal position with limbs popping out from odd locations, at first glance the works seem like a Frankenstein fantasy.

Using pigments, acrylic and ink on wasli paper, Gul’s humans are caught up in their emotions. Amulets or ‘taweez’ make a frequent appearance representing the false hopes that we place in the animate and inanimate objects around us, ranging from humans to trees, thinking of them as our saviours. On the other hand, the textured backdrop or ‘soil’ gives way to the whole cycle of life after conception, something is considered too taboo to discuss in the society.

Some of the reactions at the gallery regarding Gul’s latest offering ranged from “disturbing” and “forceful” to “in your face” and “rivetting”.

Despite finding his work “unsettling”, noted artist Roohi Ahmed found Gul’s work to be impressive. “It has a certain quality that haunts you and the message that Gul is trying to get across actually does come to fore,” she said.

Another visitor to the gallery, Mehreen said, “You don’t get to see such works everyday. We place a lot of basic facts and emotions in the ‘forbidden’ category and it’s good to see that someone has finally taken a stand and come out.”

Talking about his latest body of work, Gul, an NCA alumnus and a faculty member, said that earlier on he tried to shelter his work from external influences. “I was in denial and tried being immune to whatever was taking place around me. However, a true artist absorbs whatever is happening in his surroundings and his work reflects that,” he said.

“When a bomb goes off, your children maybe safe but you fear for their safety. It’s something similar for me too. I have the same fears, apprehensions and angst like any other member of the society,” he said. The male figure that is dominant in Forbidden serves as a reflection of Gul and shows the ups and downs he has been through, adding, “I am a person, I am a part of the surroundings and I am society!”

“Look around. Wherever we are, things around us are becoming forbidden. You can’t go to a mosque to pray fearing for your life lest a bomber strikes. You can’t go to an educational institute due to security threats. Our faith and beliefs, the quest for knowledge, all have been turned into the proverbial forbidden fruit for us,” said an emphatic Gul as he summed up ‘Forbidden’.

Forbidden continues till 12th February at ArtChowk The Gallery.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=221167

Thursday, January 7, 2010

PAKISTAN - Harvesting rain, restoring dignity







MITHI, 23 August 2009 (IRIN) - Tharparker District in Sindh Province, southern Pakistan, is among the most arid regions in the country. Limited rainfall, brackish underground water and the private ownership of wells by an elite minority have made access to potable water very difficult for much of the district’s 900,000 mostly rural inhabitants.


However, an innovative project by local NGO Thardeep Rural Development Programme (TRDP) in conjunction with the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Government of Sindh is helping alleviate Tharparker’s drought problems.


Following a survey conducted jointly by the UN children’s agency (UNICEF) and TRDP in 1998, which identified the potable water issues faced in Tharparker, the concept for the Rain Water Harvest Project (RWHP) was born. The idea was to enable villagers to collect rainfall, which is generally limited to a short annual monsoon season, store it and use it throughout the year.


“Given decreasing levels of rainfall as well as depleting water tables, it is important that we focus on conservation. RWHP allows us to store drinking water as well as replenish the water table,” Jhuman Lalchandani, a senior manager at TRDP’s Community Physical Infrastructure Unit, said.


With less rain falling in Tharparker in recent years, ground water levels have been steadily depleting. Annual rainfall in Pakistan ranges between 760mm and 1,270mm. In Sindh, the driest of the four provinces of Pakistan, annual rainfall is only 150mm to 500mm. In Tharparker, however, annual rainfall is between 100mm on the western side to 300mm in the east.

Spread over nearly 20,000 km², about the same size as New Jersey in the US, Tharparker experiences most of its rain between July and September, and usually in intermittent downpours of three to four days at a time. There are also no rivers in the district.


In addition, the high costs of digging and maintaining wells has prevented most of the local population from having access to deep aquifers.


Three types of project

Keeping low cost intervention in mind, RWHP has provided some 1,350 villages and settlements out of 2,100 with underground water storage tanks since 2000.


“At the moment, we have three types of RWH projects, which include rain water harvesting at household levels, also known as cisterns or tankas; at hamlet level ponds are used for saving water for the community; and at the village level we have delay action dams. Also, in low-lying areas, flood protection walls not only save houses from getting flooded but also allow for water to pool up and be used for other purposes,” said Lalchandani.


He said the average family of six to seven people in Tharparker needed around 10-12 litres of drinking water a day just for drinking and cooking. The cost of cement and materials to make a cistern with a capacity of about 2,000 litres is less than PKR 1,000 (US$12). Twenty percent of that cost is paid by the household receiving the cistern in the form of in-kind labour over the three to four days in takes to dig and construct a cistern.


“Each house is given a catchment area and from there the rain water is channeled to cisterns. As of June 2009, at the household level RWHP covers 92,415 homes with the number of beneficiaries being 406,833, with 219,896 of them being women,” Lalchandani said.


One of the most profound impacts of the RWHP in the majority Hindu district is that low-caste marginalized Hindus are not dependent for water any more on the village elite or high-caste neighbours. “It’s not just the issue of quenching your thirst, it’s also about social empowerment,” Dr Khataumal, TRDP’s Programme Officer for Health & Education, said.



Benefitting women


In Malanhore Veena, a village with a population of 2,500 some 6km from Tharparkar’s central town of Mithi, school teacher Soomar Motomal recalls the hardships faced during the 2000-2001 drought.


“There was no rainfall and most of the villagers were without water. The womenfolk had to walk for long distances and usually came back with empty mataka [earthenware water pots] or water that could not be consumed. But things are different now as the tanka [cisterns] have made life simple for us,” Soomar said.

In 2008, WFP and TRDP launched ‘Creating Assets for Rural Women’, a project that allowed women to own and take charge of water tanks in their homes. This effort seems to have paid off and eased the lives of women who chose to participate.

“There were days, even during our pregnancies, when we would go to a well in the morning and return in the evening because there would be a long line of women to get water,” said Nirmala, a resident of Bhakuo, a village 30km south of Mithi.


Her sister-in-law Maluka added that they used to walk 3-5km a day to get to a well with drinking water, as most of the wells in their vicinity were brackish. “With rainfall this year, we have been able to fill our tanka and this water can easily last for four to five months. Not only that, but it allows us to save up to PKR 1,500 [$18] per month that we would otherwise spend on purchasing drinking water.”


Both women paid 20 percent of the total cost of having a cistern installed and now have five cisterns that are full to capacity and are enough to see them through until next year’s rains.