Hira
Nabi

I first encountered Hira Nabi at the inaugural Lahore Biennale in 2018 (LB01). Her film All That Perishes at the Edge of Land (2018) was being shown for the first time in this context. Map in hand, I reached the designated screening room, only to be greeted by a defunct projector. There was a power cut and the screening had been paused indefinitely. Hira was sitting by a small television set, negotiating the volatile power supply of the LB01 low-tech infrastructure. I was struck by her serene composure and determination to fix this problem. The power cut continued, so we sat and chatted. Since 2018, All That Perishes at the Edge of Land has been screened in capacious rooms all over the world, inciting conversations about labor, toxic trade, trust, and ethical filmmaking.

Hira Nabi’s artistic creations probe the conditions for life and livability through a focus on labor conditions, failing infrastructures, and the annihilation of multi-worlds in contemporary Pakistan. Over the years, her endeavors have accreted around the notion of witnessing. What is meant by “witness” is not so much the act of bearing witness to a grievance in the present about an event that occurred in the past, but rather a mode of being that instigates the crafting of multi-sensorial representations. To “witness” becomes a relational concept rooted in the peculiarities of a specific political, social, and ecological micro-world that condenses into the act of testifying, as with All That Perishes, How to Love a Tree (2019–ongoing), and Mitti, Mazdoori, Mahaul (2023–ongoing). Nabi has made it abundantly clear that where care for life and living beings is at stake, the figure of the witness—traditionally regarded as human—must also make room for collective beings or living entanglements that are more-than-human. Her multimodal installations, involving the medium of film, address forms of violence that are undetectable or remain invisible to the naked eye, for example, the phenomenon of toxicity with its slow and lethal impact on human, animal, and vegetal bodies: the imperceptible but nonetheless significant disappearance of habitats and environments, including the reduction of our shared atmosphere. In crafting these textured filmic landscapes, she uses the moving image as much as sound and, increasingly, text; the spoken word lives and operates in between these various components. 

Nabi writes, “if art loses its connection with truth and reality, it ceases to be filled with vitality and energy. In many ways, it ceases to matter.” She makes a distinction between the role of the artist as storyteller and the artist as truth-teller, reminding us of the responsibility that comes with bearing witness. This is as much a part of her work as it is of her underlying ethos.

Text: Emilia Terracciano