This is from early June, but I missed it and it’s a beautiful idea.
Over several decades of political instability and strife, Karachi’s walls have become a battleground covered with bullet holes, slurs, threats, and various messages of hate.
There are photos of dirty grey walls covered in writing.
A group of Karachiites started a campaign called “I Am Karachi” to reclaim public spaces by promoting arts, sports, culture and dialogue. Their newest aim is to reclaim the city’s walls and bring back its positive general environment.
There are photos of bright colorful walls that will knock your socks off.
Faraz Fayaaz
Wajiha Naqvi, the leader and manager of this campaign, talked to BuzzFeed about their “Reimagining the Walls of Karachi” initiative. Young artists have come together to paint over the hate with beauty.
“The effort is to reclaim the walls of Karachi which are often covered with hate graffiti towards certain ethnic groups and political sloganeering,” Wajiha told us in an email.
…
“We want to replace them with images that illustrate/depict positive values,” she further said.
Look at all the photos – they’re amazing.
Azhar Ibrahim
One of the risks of the project is that Wajiha and her team are erasing politically and religiously charged graffiti, which have been sources of conflict and violence, and replacing them with the exact opposite – sources of beauty and unity.
A risky thing to do…
Canada is entering our own political instability, by the way. No bullets but pretty dangerous to the planet if the Harper Conservatives get another government. We have an 11 week campaign ahead of us, which might seem short to Americans but is almost twice the length of our normal campaigns (normally 6 weeks from the dropping of the writ to election day). Our Conservative government is planning to bend and break every rule to out spend the other parties.
Anyway, I’ll be working hard on making sure they’re not successful over the next 11 weeks. Wish us luck.
And, if you’re Canadian, please vote on October 19. Full disclosure, I support the NDP. In the last election, more Canadians didn’t vote than voted for any one party. 40% of registered voters didn’t bother. Please exercise your right to vote. The NDP are the best bet right now but vote Liberal or Green, if you must. Just VOTE! It’s bad enough that fucker Harper got a majority gov’t without knowing that he got it because people couldn’t be arsed to vote.
Yes, anything but Harper. I do hope that people choose the NDP and that we see a repeat of the Alberta elections but I’m not too optimistic.
How long until some fundie imam declares that The Big A® hates all pictures, even of elephants and robins?
Yup, because we might be at risk of worshipping elephants and robins; or even beauty as an abstract. What we should really be doing of course is worshipping the beauty of God’s word – interpreted exactly as they tell us too.
This also applies to other religions past and present (and no doubt future).
Unthinking acceptance of Authority. That’s where it’s at these days, even in the Atheoskeptosphere.