Umber Majeed’s Trans-Pakistan Zindabad (Facts about the Earth) at 1708 Gallery, Richmond

Umber Majeed, Exhibition detail of *Trans-Pakistan Zindabad (Facts about the Earth)*, 2021. All images courtesy the Artist and 1708 Gallery. Photograph by David Hale.

Umber Majeed, Exhibition detail of *Trans-Pakistan Zindabad (Facts about the Earth)*, 2021. Photograph by David Hale.

Umber Majeed, *Fotocopy 2.0*, 2020-2021; web interactive environment, flatscreen, desk, chair, two drawings on paper, dimensions variable. Photograph by David Hale.

In Trans-Pakistan Zindabad (Facts about the Earth), Umber Majeed instills her own form of immersivity—her plethora of research materials envelops the visitor. Atlases in Urdu, children’s books, real estate advertisements, and her uncle’s archives become drawings, interactive web-based media, collage, and vinyl. This installation is a sleek yet glitched and fractured rendering of a re-imagined Trans-Pakistan travel agency headquarters. Trans-Pakistan Zindabad (Facts about the Earth) infiltrates the façade of tourism and leisure. Majeed uses its specific visual language (in her words, “South Asian digital kitsch”) to chart the residues and impact of technocratic regimes on the formation of national identities, urban planning, and the problematic centrality of the West.
from the exhibition text

Umber Majeed, *Digital Manual*, 2021; zine, 5 1/2 by 8 1/2 inches. Photograph by David Hale.

Umber Majeed’s Trans-Pakistan Zindabad (Facts about the Earth) is on view at 1708 Gallery in Richmond through August 14, 2021.

Burnaway

Umber Majeed’s Trans-Pakistan Zindabad (Facts about the Earth) at 1708 Gallery, Richmond

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