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 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 labour, toxic trade, trust, and ethical filmmaking.

Hira’s artistic creations probe the conditions for life and liveability through a focus on labour conditions, failing infrastructures, and the annihilation of multi-worlds in contemporary Pakistan. Over the years, her endeavours 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). Hira 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 bodies, human, animal, and vegetal; 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. 

She 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 artist as storyteller, and the artist as truth-teller, and reminds us of 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