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Showing posts from December, 2018
Bringing Nature Back to the City Andy Warhol’s Do It Yourself (Landscape) 1962 painting by numbers emphasizes the alienation of city dwellers from the direct experience of nature. For Any Warhol landscape was not misty hills in the countryside, but gleaming rows of supermarket shelves.   The designers of the fifties were determined to invent newness to distance themselves from the ugliness of two World Wars. By the 60s, the “false joy”, as it has been called, became a very real celebration of the city, with its consumerism, plastic products and mass culture. 50 years on, the world is aghast at enormous plastic islands floating on the oceans, and the effects of climate change. As more than half the world population lives in cities, connected by motorways that slice through forests, mountains and valleys, what we consider nature, has shrunk dramatically. Progress is now a sober discussion on sustainability, eco-friendly and recyclable products . Cities are expected to
Beyond Gender Earlier this month, two extraordinary women were in the news: Fahmida Riaz, the poet, whose death was mourned by many and SP Suhai Aziz Talpur, whose triumph was celebrated by proud Pakistanis when she was at the forefront of the operation against the terrorists who attacked the Chinese Consulate in Karachi. While many feminists may celebrate them, they represent a far more complex space that cannot be contained in a traditional gender discourse.   Fahmida Riaz said in an interview with fellow poet, Amar Sindhu “I am not an exceptionally politically over-charged poet. Perhaps the only exception is that I am a woman.”   She has translated into Urdu Rumi’s Masnavi, the poetic works of Shah Latif Bhittai and Shaikh Ayaz, written about a range of political and social issues. However, her public perception is imprinted with her 1978 publication       Badan Dareeda in which she   shared her sensual awakening. She says she did not set out to shock but merely expre