Transoceanic Exchanges
IVS Gallery
Karachi, 2025
Display of 12 prints at IVS Gallery for Transoceanic Exchanges
Discourses by Godrej Sidhwa (left:black, right:green) Etching, Aquatint on Zinc Plate. 14.04 x 9.07 inches (without borders)
Navigating–Hormuz to Nargol (left:blue, right:black) Etching and Aquatint on Zinc Plates, 11.03 x 8.01 inches (without borders)
Rivayat's Description of the dakhma in Old Gujarati (left: toproll, right: watercolour, tea and saffron. Etching on Zinc Plate 14.04 x 9.06 inches (without borders)
View of Arkayim, Ural Region, Hamazor (left: toproll, right: green watercolour). Etching and Aquatint on Zinc Plate. 13.07 x 11.04 inches (without borders)
Old Girls Association- Sanjan Stambh (;eft:black, right: purple)
Etching and Aquatint on Zinc Plate with watercolour. 19.05 x 11.07 inches (without borders)
The Cherag! Ajmalgadh Monument (left: black, right: purple and pink). Etching and Aquatint on Zinc Plate. 19.03 x 11.07 inches (without borders)
Curated by Aziz Sohail, Vera Ryser and Sandev Handy and Studio for Memory PoliticsPhotography by Humayun Memon
This work was commissioned by Voices from an Archived Silence – Transoceanic Exchanges (2023–2025) a collaborative project by Studio for Memory Politics which aims to explore and address silences in cultural memory in the postcolonial geographies of Colombo and Karachi. The project brought together four artists - Sophia Balagamwala and Veera Rustomji from Karachi and Hema Shironi Joseph and Firi Rahman from Colombo in a transoceanic dialogue to confront silences, erasures, and gaps in cultural memory within their distinct contexts.
“For Transoceanic Exchanges I am examining one of the largest collections of Zoroastrian literature in South Asia, situated at the Dastur Dr Dhalla x Young Mazdayasnian Zoroastrian Association (Y.M.Z.A) library in Karachi. It is in a paradoxical location between entities of both life and death; footsteps away from the Towers of Silence within Cyrus Minwalla Colony, the most populous area of Zoroastrian residents in Karachi. Working with its multilingual publications (variants of Pahlavi, Gujarati, English and Farsi), I made snippets of entry points that discuss Zoroastrian imagination, diagrams and visual conversation through etchings and aquatints. These prints and structure of ‘presentation’ trace the archive’s materiality, questioning access, fragility and viewership as a maker and a reader.
Eagles, termites, stray dogs and fat lizards—these are some of my companions leading up to,and within the library itself. A year-long interaction with a mass of printed materials at the Dastur Dr Dhalla x Young Mazdayasnian Zoroastrian Association Library, has made me realise how archives can live at the edges of non-human existence in stillness and isolation. With literature in languages ranging from old and new Gujarati, Farsi and even Pahlavi, the scripts and images among the library’s collection tell a story of community hierarchies, economical patronage and contention points of religious discourse. Since the library relocated to its current home in the early 2000s, its close proximity to centres of life and death has underscored a paradox: while it yearns to be heard and read, it also seeks to exist behind a protective shield. I have been documenting not only the content of specific publications, but moments, cracks and deteriorations within the space. This one-way relationship that I have had with the library is captured with prints, bringing copies or suggested insights of the library into a gallery space.Within this display and research in process, I consider the formalities and structure of the library and what it may mean for future custodians of this space to live without the resources that they have to day.”