Hira Nabi – How To Love A Tree
In her live multichannel performance ‘How to Love a Tree’, Hira Nabi weaves together whispered narratives from sylvan landscapes, misty mountain sides, ghosts of extraction and British imperialism, inviting us into forest time. Part of an ongoing artistic project, launched in 2019, ‘How to Love a Tree’ documents the former colonial hill stations in the blue pine forests of Murree and the Galiyat region of Pakistan. Nabi sees these places as ecosystems that are crumbling, marked by a history of imperial rule. She focuses on making remnants of this painful past visible in what are now tourist destinations in the hills. Here, traces of exploitation mingle with expressions of capitalism, while the deterioration of the environment continues.