Home In Pieces is a collective—determined to recover records and anecdotes through material memory from the internally displaced people (IDP). The collective came into existence when a fine artist Noor Un Nahar & a historian and archivist Aanchal Malhotra sat down with a civil society activist and architect Marvi Mazhar to make an archive of stories from those who had lost everything within the borders of their own country..
This collective aims to gather the experience of families that were forced to flee their homes due to a number of tragedies that hit the state over a certain period of time. In 2009, Pakistan was met with massive displacement of citizens due to Operation Black Thunderstorm. Since the beginning of this mission against Taliban in 2008, over 1.2 millions civilians from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were displaced across the country. In Sindh and Punjab, flooding of recent years left thousands of people in devastation. It resulted in more IDPs moving across the country in hopes of finding a better place.
HIP’s objectives include documenting the origins of items that IDPs carried with them. Without removing the human presence from the narrative, HIP focuses on preserving the memory that is attached to the body of a certain object.
Noor Un Nahar earned her BFA from Indus Valley School of Art and left for Cornell University to pursue her MFA. She works in the realm of ceramics and new media, to combine both traditional and technological sides integrated in art. Marvi Mazhar is also an alumna of Indus Valley School of art. With a Masters under her belt from the University of Turin, she founded Pakistan Chowk community center. She also served as a director to T2F, a community space that is one of a kind art center for the city of Karachi. Aanchal Malhotra received her BFA in Print Making and Art History from Ontario College of Art & Design. She later got her MFA in Studio Art from Concordia University. Malhotra is also an author of the book “Remnants of a Separation”. In her book, she explores the material people had taken along before leaving their homes during the great divide of 1947. This book was one of the biggest inspirations for Home In Pieces collective.
HIP has already interviewed over a hundred IDPs and collected a plethora of objects to work with. This dialogue between material memory and its possessor takes place in a formal setting, where the object becomes a vessel to convey a story. A girl from Malakand could only grab a wooden spoon while fleeing the area. This spoon was made of a rare wood found in Afghanistan and had been a part of her family for three generations. What she grabbed in a haste was not a mere spoon but the continuation of a legacy. She told HIP it was not a conscious decision —departing from that object was not a possibility. Even if that meant leaving something more practical behind.
Home In Pieces is set to showcase these photographed objects in a series of exhibitions across the city of Karachi, where the IDPs were settled. The locations are not going to be white-box galleries but carefully curated spaces already existing on the camp site of IDPs residence. With the photography skills of Noor Un Nahar, the archival method integration of Malhotra, and navigation of the city under Mazhar, the exhibition are anticipated to raise money for the betterment of the community of IDPs.
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