زندگی مذاحمت ہے
(life is resistance)

We wanted to bring forth the resistances of the many women who continually agitate, even during the pandemic crisis. These three murals are from the many campaigns that arose during this year. #SouthAsianArtists

These murals were a process of understanding and recognizing that all of these are feminist issues, that the resistance involved in them is a fight for bread, but also a fight for roses.

From women from GB calling for #InternetforGilgitBaltistan, to women in Tharparkar marching for land rights to Baloch female students demanding their right to education while facing police brutality. (And many many ongoing struggles happening everywhere in Pakistan)

This is a labor of love. Me, @rylanthegeek, @taaram.zc, @menal.artpage responded to @FearlessCoArt and @shilosuleman’s call to respond to political moments happening around us during COVID in July.

Since then so much has happened, unfolded, politically, personally, and the energy and labor needed to make something like a mural was very very difficult.

But on this Sunday, (mid-october now ), we woke up at 5.30 ready to put up art in the streets!

While working on these drawings, Shaheena Shaheen was murdered, the #MotorwayRape happened and Bahria Town’s goons yet again came to illegally demolish the homes of the Goths that have existed there forever. We came to Karachi Press Club to protest against patriarchal violence.

We saw clips of Baloch and Sindhi women doing pathrao against the redevelopment seeking to destroy their land, their ecosystems, their homes, their worlds. #SayNoToBahriaTown

Each violence and each resistance another thing to respond to, to remember, to do something about.

I wish we could fill our cities with these moments of resistance. But more than that I wish we could destroy this system that routinely brutalizes women.

But till then here are some videos of the murals and you can try spotting them in real time at johar mor bridge! Lots of cute uncles in motorcycles and rickshaws paused to look and ask what the art was about.

the pink rickshaw wala stopped for a good 5 minutes looking and reading at the #InternetForGilgitBaltistan mural. I had to walk back to it to take a picture

at this point people who work around the bridge (people who keep the area clean, manage traffic etc) started having a discussion on the art and other people would often stop and ask them ke kya horaha hai

Just a year ago all four of us met through @kinaraycollective, a group we had formed in IVS, because we were architects, artists, illustrators and animators exhausted by patriarchy. Never did I think that we would continue to meet and actually put up something like this together.

also, my baby sis painted some of the roses and due credit must be given to her!!! and @fatemarbab for driving us and being masterful with glue.