Durriya kazi biography

DURRIYA KAZI.
Durriya Kazi and David Alesworth live and work in Karachi, Pakistan.
Durriya Kazi is a sculptor based in Karachi whose work reflects her concerns with tradition and change.

•

At the end of Craig Foster’s 2020 documentary film My Octopus Teacher, he shows his son the wonders of nature along the shore and in the sea. He says the most important thing to learn is a gentleness that thousands of hours in nature can teach a child.

The word ‘gentleness’ suddenly stood out and could well be the best description of the film. It is a word rarely used today. One is more likely to hear the words ‘success’, ‘ambition’ or ‘being tough’ in an ungiving world.

Today, the word gentleness is more likely to be used as a quality to sell face cream, pampers or bed sheets rather than as a spiritual value. Once a quality to be nurtured, gentleness gradually became associated with high birth, and soon lost its value as education and power spread across class. Today, we rarely hear people being described as gentlemen, and its extension, gentrification, has acquired a negative connotation of deliberate exclusivity.

Gentleness as a quality is seen as sentimental, mawkish or weak — people who can be easily pushed ar

•

durriya kazi

Stepping over the fence

In his essay A Conceptual Analysis of the Aesthetics, David Driedger 1 , gives a rather startling... more In his essay A Conceptual Analysis of the Aesthetics, David Driedger 1 , gives a rather startling example of the subject-object relationship in evaluating aesthetics, using the sub heading, " Beauty as the Beast". He asks us to imagine a bull in a fenced enclosure. From our side of the fence, we imagine many ways of relating to the bull. However, if we climb over the fence and enter the bull's space, our relationship completely alters. While the bull has not changed, we begin to perceive it in a completely altered manner. "The relationship becomes mutual, though unequal. However, in contrast to scientific assumptions, the subject cannot control the procedures. The subject must instead understand how to relate." Those artists who have stepped outside their traditional art practice to collaborate with artists on the other side of the fence, will possibly recognize this effect. Successful public art collaborations hav

•

When the 33-year-old Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling, Pope Julius II would impatiently ask him when it would be complete. The artist would reply, “When I am satisfied.” Rodin took 37 years to compete his Gates of Hell. The Taj Mahal took 22 years, two more that the Great Pyramid at Giza. The Great Wall of China took 2,000 years!

One could say that these were commissioned by the rich and powerful, but then there are the living root bridges of Indonesia and North East India, made by villagers for their own use, that can take at least 15 years to complete.

The concept of time has changed very dramatically. Time was once measured by the movement of the sun. Daytime was for activity, night for rest. The sundial measured the hours of the day. Most people would just guess the time of day by looking up at the sky.

Hourglasses, measuring candles and water clocks were some of the devices that measured time independently of the sun. Bells marked the eight daily prayer times for Bendictine monks and gave the name to clocks from the Latin word for bells &m