Damon Kowarsky. Picture: Marcella Davie.
FROM Prahran to Pakistan and back again, Damon Kowarsky is learning universal truths about his art.
Some of his works are presently showing in New York City at Aicon Gallery, in Invisible Cities.
The gallery specialises in art from India and Pakistan, and a number of colleagues from Kowarsky’s travels to the latter as a student and teacher had led him to successfully apply to exhibit.
Kowarsky has taught print-making workshops in Lahore and Karachi on the subjects of architecture, politics, textile design and contemporary life in Pakistan.
“Culturally, it’s so rich and the art scene is incredible. It’s a place of great contrasts,” he said.
“We get all this (violence and tension reported) in the media, which is absolutely crazy, but with my friends we played frisbee in the park until dusk.
“Artists (there) are politically motivated. They’ve got a lot of things to say about what is going on in the world, (that their) identity is not limited to the craziness: (it’s) sophisticated, cultural, with huge tradition.
“I’m not sure I could live there, because it’s tough, but each time it hurts to come home.”
The exhibition is inspired by Italo Calvino’s 1972 novella of the same name, and substitutes Pakistan for Calvino’s Venice.
“It’s about imaginary dialogues between explorer Marco Polo and emperor Kublai Khan,” Kowarsky said.
Kublai Khan says Marco Polo is not describing different cities, but one city in many ways; cities within a city, Kowarsky said.
“We know this in Melbourne, where there are so many different parts and ways: like Richmond, you could be in Vietnam; or Footscray, in Ethiopia.”
Kowarsky’s cities comprise large, faceless buildings, “because big buildings are (faceless); glass walled, but no windows, no detail as such. When you look at them in a geometric way, they’re just boxes, a contrast with older cities which are so ramshackle. It’s the modern city as the Weetbix packet.”
The Invisible Cities exhibition can be seen online at aicongallery.com.