Artwork Information

Abdul HAdi

Basood Mukalma, 2023
Animation
1 min 40 seconds

Basood Mukalma meaning “Meaningless Dialogue”, is a video art shaped by the
artist’s daily time spent at local chai dhabas—public spaces scattered across
every corner in Pakistan, filled with plastic chairs and men engaged in endless
political conversations.
The animation is composed of theatrical interplay of the floating shoes,
wooden chairs, and plastic chairs, all revolving within a vacant space: some
colliding, some sliding past each other, some slipping silently through gaps as if
caught in a conversation without resolution.
Drawn from the artist’s time spent observing and engaging in these public
spaces, the work captures the rhythm and repetition of informal political
discourse, ongoing, unresolved, and often circular. The animation transforms
these ordinary objects into silent participants, echoing the voices, gestures,
and pauses that shape the everyday theatre of chai corners. Here, dialogue
becomes motion, and objects stand in for the presence of many