Pak Khawateen Painting Club researches the history and politics of water bodies, flow of water, fluidity, bodies blocking water and bodies moving along water. Complex irrigation engineering projects introduced and conceived by the colonial British powers for enhancing agricultural produce reshaped the landscape and abetted feudalism and classism. The Club has previously followed six dams, which were either built, being built or to be built. Each dam is a colossal body that blocks water for the lower riparian communities that have indigenous practices and agricultural lands that relied on the free flow. During the second expedition the Club witnessed the effects of dams on the people living at the tail end of the irrigation system. We followed the Indus River from the northernmost Jinnah Barrage, down to the south till the delta. Going from barrage to barrage, each of the seven barrages although contribute to agriculture but also visually change the landscape making it either more green or more desert-like. As we moved south, terrain around barrages became more saline, and unconducive to growing food.

On our third expedition, we invited another collective Lumens Studios, UK, and led an all-female expedition. Previous expeditions had been studying ambitious man-made engineering structures to control water but this expedition went to some of the largest glaciers which are water reservoirs and are continuously shifting and changing shape. The glaciers are also a water source for rivers in south Asia, and are a part of the ‘Third Pole’, one of the largest ice reserves in the world. The collectives went to four of the glaciers in Hunza district and also into towns which live next to them and are directly affected by glacial lake outbursts and rely on them for water source. Drawing from the work of James C Scott, the mountains especially from Cambodia to Afghanistan is a belt called Zomia, a place for refuge from repressive states. These communities migrated to the mountains to remain stateless and not fall into the trap of being indentured slaves to produce and toil on the lands of agrarian states. While the plains are sites for barrages and dams, and have also been agrarian societies that relied on large populations and slavery to produce food; the mountains were the opposite and housed small egalitarian communities who were runaways.

Our project aims to show the precarity and beauty of living with large natural formations such as glaciers. While these mountains are no longer spaces of refuge, they have developed into touristic towns and brought exponential wealth with the price of climate change and global warming. The works were produced during fieldwork, in the form of journals, videos, sounds, photography and some were later produced in the studio, such as paintings and drawings.

This project is a part of Pakistan-UK New Perspectives 2022 programme launched to celebrate Pakistan’s 75th anniversary of Independence in 2022. The programme features projects addressing shared global challenges including but not limited to digital innovation, environmental sustainability, gender equality, diversity and inclusion principles, and empowering young leaders of the future. Find out more: britishcouncil.pk/new-perspectives
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We would like to thank the British Council for their support and Asma Haider and the staff at Mountain Story Resort Hunza for all their kindness and hospitality.