Qinza Inter-Disciplinary Artist

Qinza
India and Pakistan have been ‘frenemies’ for over 60 years. The Wagah border between Pakistan and India has long been an icon that represents separation and rivalry. The crossing even has a daily joint-military ceremony, with dance-like maneuvers, performed by soldiers from both sides. 
Using the location of this ceremony, Bolo creates a loose tracing of the Wagah border as it appears on google maps and recreates it with hand painted stones. The black stones represent Pakistan while the white stones represent India. The fuchsia stones represent the highway that runs through these two very similar yet divided countries. In both countries, the narrative is hatred toward the enemy. Misguided and opinionated text books combined with a healthy dose of politicians and army generals emphasizing the constant neighboring threat has put a spotlight on the differences between the people, rather than the similarities. 

When visitors step on these stones, many of them get displaced and spread from one side of the border to the other. With this, the demarcations blur, the stones are reunited and the two cultures metaphorically merge. 
A wall-mounted camera will capture the shuffling and shifting of stones at regular intervals, to create a time lapse video. This wall-mounted video display will give the interacting audience a sense of the transformation they are taking part in, by walking on the installation.

Bolo (Qinza Najm & Saks Afridi)