Sky Limit Walled City
November 2008
Platform for Public Art in Old Town (Walled City), Lahore, Pakistan
KUNSTrePUBLIK rented a rooftop and loft space for the production, exhibition, and viewing of public art and discourse. Sky Limit Walled city sits peacefully above the hectic and dense market of Lahore’s largest street market. Contrary to the dynamic life on street level, the roofs are abandoned and empty, only sometimes people can be seen i.e. children playing games,women hang laundry, men bow in prayer and other men build towering pigeon houses Sky Limit Walled City offers a rare perspective from which to make and view site-specific art. It is located in a close-knit community where one neighbor knows the other neighbor. In Lahore’s market, buildings are built block by block with one room stacked on top of the next, moving and twisting continually closer until all practical space has been contained.
This architectural structure, void of zoning laws, and the medieval structure of the street market are visually bombarded each day with both traditional and Western products. With an intrusion of contemporary art, this largely conservative neighborhood subverts our approach as we respond to it. But like the construction of its building, Sky Limit Walled City invites more spaces and layers in this dynamic place.
In November 2008 at the Lahore Residency (Vasl Arts), KUNSTrePUBLIK produced the first exhibition at Sky Limit Walled City. It is intended to be led and managed by a team of local artists, with the aim that it becomes a lasting project of local interaction.
in the context of
The Lahore Residency 2008 organised by the artist collective Vasl Arts in cooperation with the Anne Marie Schimmel House (Lahore Goethe Institut).
For a period of 2 weeks artists from Pakistan, India, Iran, China, Scotland, Nepal and Germany shared a house and were working on site specific projects in the city of Lahore.