Bio 
Sara Vaqar Pagganwala received her BFA (hons) from Central St. Martins, University of the Arts, London and is a multidisciplinary artist, curator and academic. She has been a part of several group shows locally and internationally. Her work explores the construction and rearrangement of different materials and properties and asks questions about form and control. She also investigates notions of the body and identity as a repetitive constant, especially in her performative work.
Pagganwala was an assistant curator for the inaugural Karachi Biennale 2017 and curated Mix Tape (1), an exhibition of contemporary performance art from all over Pakistan at Canvas Gallery, Karachi. She has since been a part of curating numerous shows in Karachi including Quantum City Territory | Space | Place, which was the first International Public Art Festival at the iconic Karachi Port Trust (co- curated with Amin Gulgee and Zarmeene Shah); Lal Jadoo, an exhibition of performance art at Karachi House and a part of the second International Public Art Festival which was aired live (co- curated by Amin Gulgee); The Trojan Donkey, a virtual international performance show happening simultaneously in over twenty eight different cities around the world (co- curated by Amin Gulgee and Adam Fahy- Majeed); If These Walls Could Talk, a drive through new media show (co-curated by Amin Gulgee). Her recent project, Jagah Hai, was co-curated by Amin Gulgee and Adam Fahy-Majeed, which was Pakistan’s largest performance art show with over fifty-two works from artists from all over the country.
Pagganwala currently lives and works in Karachi. She has worked as an assistant curator at Canvas Gallery and is a part of the adjunct faculty in the Liberal Arts department at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, where she designed and introduced performance art as a course for the first time in Pakistan.
Artist Statement | Knowledge of the Ancients
Bi83 Series: Aik Qisam Ki Dhaat Aur Meri Kahaani The creative state is one in continuous flux, where one has the ability to expand and explore without boundaries. It is a space which exists both in the physical and astral; the product of which delivers to address one’s psychiatric apparatus.
It perhaps comes as no surprise to be working with this metal and to discover, that bismuth is believed to have healing properties. This stimulates energy and channel it into achieving certain objectives. It works to compose and collect association and connect you to your higher consciousness, clearing biological energy fields (whilst also working as an antacid to treat issues such as indigestion on the worldly plane!)
The faceted morphology of the crystal perhaps mimics life as it is. The edges of the hopper crystal are fully developed, but the interior spaces are not filled in; always in motion. The process of crystal making is an anomalous one, where there is only so much so you have control over. We unremittingly investigate the Earth’s ecologies and we try and replicate them. And that is our kahaani.
