Deep narratives

Sohail Zuberi through exploration, excavation, and encounter and by chance discovered, unearthed and brought to light various objects that washed onto the shores of Clifton Beach Karachi's two kilometer area. His collection of those lost and sunken pieces of objects and discarded and disposed things by people was recently displayed at Koel Gallery Karachi titled "Archaeologies of Tomorrow".
The set of objects that were collected consists of the pieces of sunken or capsized fishing boats, fragments of a boat's hull, blue and green painted planks of wood, wood or sheet metal, and rods, ropes, sinkers, kitchen items, fishing paddles, Jacobs ladder, boat crown, paint brushes, toys, various bones and skulls of animals and sea creatures religious and ritual objects, rehail and pages of Holy Quran.
Sohails work was like a field research about human relation with the things they think unusable to them or lost. Those object washed again on shore to be seen and discovered by someone and in this case by Sohail if ignored they may washed away again by the waves into the deep sea to be washed ashore again some day. The life and death of these objects have deep narratives for the artist.
Some of the objects were related to socio-cultural beliefs and practices of people of the city such as topis, rehels, alams, taawiz, and boris carrying scraps of Quranic/religious text. While the dead bodies of sea animals and bones and skulls of cows, goat and bulls remind the people's ignorance to sea, to the environment they are living in. They don't care about its flora and fauna, and its animal, marine, and bird life. The developing industries in Karachi has affected badly on marine ecology. You can find dead fish on the shore, along with turtles, marine birds, dolphins, and sometimes even whales, which is a sign of natural environment degradation.
The process of preservation began when an object was found by taking its photograph at the site and then categorizes it and shifted it from sand to be cleaned and washed then carefully mounted to be viewed by the people interested in their fate. This documentation of objects and different tools and materials living and non-living things help understanding and knowing the social practices as well serve like an archaeological work of the city as the things buried in the sand revealed by shifting of sand as the water back from the shore after tide.
There were ropes tangled in each other on display. There were varied types and sizes of ropes knotted in different techniques according to their function. Fishermen mostly use natural fiber rope which connected their boat to land and them to the sea hence this is the object that connect them both to land and sea. Another find was sinker stones locally known as bhaari used in the weighing down of fishing nets and lines.Hence each object has its own story as these things once reality for someone now became history.
There were also drone's eye view videos at the exhibition of a two kilometer stretch of beach known as Sahil Beach showing beautiful aerial view of the sea.