TEXT:

In Trans-Pakistan Zindabad (Facts about the Earth), Umber Majeed instills her own form of immersivity—her plethora of research materials will envelop the visitor. Atlases in Urdu, children’s books, real estate advertisements, and her uncle’s archives become drawings, interactive web-based media, collage, and vinyl. This installation is a sleek yet glitched and fractured rendering of a re-imagined Trans-Pakistan travel agency headquarters. Trans-Pakistan Zindabad (Facts about the Earth) infiltrates the façade of tourism and leisure. Majeed uses its specific visual language (in her words, “South Asian digital kitsch”) to chart the residues and impact of technocratic regimes on the formation of national identities, urban planning, and the problematic centrality of the West. 

Majeed will give a public lecture performance at 1708 on Saturday, July 17 at 11 am in which she will weave her way through the digital interfaces she creates, like the work included in this exhibition, fotocopy.net. Through manipulating her cultural subjectivity and shifting visual and conceptual perspective in virtual and real time, Majeed’s performance will elucidate key tenets of her research as artistic process and her socio-political endeavours.

PROGRAM:

Lecture Performance: Umber Majeed
Saturday, July 17 at 11 AM
The artist gave a public lecture performance at 1708 in which she wove her way through the digital interfaces she creates, including the work included in this exhibition, fotocopy.net. 

NOTES ON TRANS-PAKISTAN ZINDABAD, a new essay by Karina Iskandarsjah about Majeed’s project and practice, was commissioned for ext.1708 Journal.

Online Screening: Trans-Pakistan Zindabad (Long Live Trans-Pakistan)
On Saturday August 14, 2021 in celebration of Majeed’s exhibition and in recognition of Pakistan Independence Day, we invited viewers to watch Majeed's short film Trans-Pakistan Zindabad (Long Live Trans-Pakistan) of which the exhibition draws its title.