Site of Diamer Bhasha dam is part of the Silk Route and is dotted with more than 30,000 petroglyphs from the Hindu Shahi and Buddhist periods. These will be submerged under the dam reservoir once it is built.

Spillways at their peak during monsoon season

Malik Falqoos, jirga leader at the remote Kaigah Valley, locating female Markhor deer and fawns on the opposite mountain.

Isolated nomadic family in Kaigah Valley, Kohistan, Pakistan

Construction site of Dasu dam, Kohistan, Pakistan

Tarbela Dam reservoir with hills of Gandgarh which are fabled to be dead giants killed by King Rasalu.

Spillways at their peak during monsoon season

Inside the diversion tunnel of Dasu Dam being built by a Chinese construction company CGGC.

Gushing river in the remote valley of Kaigah Valley, Kohistan, Pakistan

Diorama of Tarbela Dam with the actual spillways at the back. The hills are fabled to be dead giants

Malik Falqoos, jirga leader who also runs Markhor deer game reserve where foreign hunters pay USD 100 thousand for one hunt. Here they are trying to locate the deer at Kaigah Valley, Kohistan, Pakistan

Artist Zahoor ul Akhlaq ‘s sculpture at Tarbela dam commemorating lives of those who died during dam construction.

To cross over the torrential currents, rocks are thrown in the seasonal river in the Kaigah Valley, Kohistan, Pakistan. Once the nearby Dasu Dam is completed, the dam revoir will partially inundate the valley.

Construction of Dasu dam with humming of machines and the gushing of River Indus.

A commissioned mural by painter Sadequain in the power house of Mangla Dam built in the 1960s

Large boulder with carvings of Buddha’s Sibi Jataka located on the dam site of Diamer Bhasha dam, Kohistan, Pakistan

Lunch at the Chinese Barseen Camp with engineers from CGGC, a Chinese Engineering company, Kohistan, Pakistan.

Dasu Dam is being built by a Chinese company, here a senior consultant explains to the Club how the Karakorum Highway will be relocated further up the mountain.

Tarbela Dam, built in the 1970s after Indus Water Sharing Treaty brokered by World Bank between Pakistan and India.

A platform near the site of Diamer Bhasha Dam, 18 billion dollar dam that was to be crowdfunded by the citizens of Pakistan but never met the targeted amount.

A platform near the site of Diamer Bhasha Dam, an 18 billion dollar dam that was to be crowdfunded by the citizens of Pakistan but never met the targeted amount.

Kalabagh Dam’s abandoned colony. A dam that was shelved in the 80s due to ethnic and provincial debates on water sharing rights.

 

Field Recordings/Photos

 

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Installation Video

Collection of Sharjah Art Foundation

Artist Statement/Bio

A group of women artists called the ‘Pak Khawateen Painting Club’ (Pure/Pakistani Women’s Painting Club) venture to the frontier of the Indus river for ‘plein-air’ painting of nationalistic infrastructure projects: mega hydropower dams in the strategically sensitive north. Stereotyped as a benign, bourgeoisie group of patriotic conformists, these female painters don uniforms inspired by Pierre Cardin’s 60s design for Pakistan International airlines’ airhostesses. They enter sites built and imagined by powerful men to generate power and energy for the nation – only to subvert their prescribed roles. Drawing upon the epic Urdu novel, ‘River of Fire’ by Qurratalain Haider, complex, cross-temporal narratives are interwoven to depict a people united around diverse sources of life and inspiration derived from the Indus: deities, rituals, supernatural powers and folklore transcend religion and time, buttressing subaltern cultures and riverine communities. The foregrounding of these organic forces, traditions, and aesthetic forms challenges the masculine rubric of colonial modernity, the epitome of which is hydrological engineering oriented towards commercial agriculture. The latter, which has resulted in the displacement of indigenous populations, unequal division of resources and inundation of histories, finds an unexpected foe in its (not so) -‘Pak’ provocateurs:  Amna Hashmi, Malika Abbas, Natasha Malik, Emaan Shaikh, Saba Khan, and Saulat Ajmal.

http://www.sabakhan.com/