About

Born and raised in Karachi, Halar Soomro is an artist, cultural researcher, and post-colonial archivist currently based in Amsterdam. Moving across video, performance, and archival storytelling, Halar’s practice delves into the intersections of memory, displacement, and post-colonial identities. Rooted in his family’s migration following the 1947 Partition of India, his work reconstructs histories that colonial narratives often overlook.

A graduate of the Maastricht Institute of Arts, Halar has exhibited extensively across Europe, including his graduation project Ghar: Frames of Recollected Memories, showcased at Dutch Design Week, Landbouwbelang Maastricht and VOX-POP Amsterdam. His video works Nani, Karachi, and I is an earnest exploration of his grandmother’s migration to post-Partition Karachi, having to sculpt her life from the fragments of a divided homeland, blending restored family archives, intimate interviews, and recreated memories in an effort to collectively remmeber inherited trauma.

Halar is one of the founding members of tu.la.lit, a cross-continental platform for post-colonial co-research through sonic mapping and street culture, alongside his art school buddies. His practice incorporates interdisciplinary methods, including the digitization of familial artifacts, oral history documentation, and ethnographic research. Motivated by a deep desire to challenge fabricated socio-political divides within South Asia, Halar’s work fosters a nuanced understanding of liberation, emphasizing cultural reclamation and collective healing amidst fragmented histories.

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Karachi, PK | Amsterdam, NL

52.3676° N, 4.9041° E

ghar: volume I - گھر: واليوم ۱