Unfinished Kite (working title, 2025) is an ongoing project from Karachi and Hunza Valley, Pakistan.

In May of 2015, I went to Karachi, Pakistan to meet my internet friends in person. It had been years of e-mails, tweets, and facebook chats, riffing about the experimental music, cult films and TV shows that we obsessed over, and other counterculture art that no one else back home seemed interested in. Most of the online friends I had made were musicians, making music you'd rarely come by in mainstream music media. I'd always been drawn to DIY music scenes, and the one in Karachi seemed no different than the scenes I had gotten to know in Berlin and New York. It felt more welcoming than the punk spaces I grew up in.

I spent a month in Karachi getting to know my online friends in person, and found the transition of going from internet friends to real life friends fascinating. I already knew so much about these people and their lives before arriving in Karachi, but had no sense of their outward selves. I found solace in a community of other neurodivergent artists who had created a safe space for art and queerness, and where "odd" hobbies thrived, in a city that had never really fostered it. But the reality of poverty and corruption was still very much a backdrop to the life there – we hid our phones in the trunk of the car when going from one house to the other, and kept cash handy in case we got stopped and harassed by the military.

Then I was introduced to Sabeen Mahmud, described to me as a sort of feminist mother of Karachi's DIY scene. She had helped open a space called T2F, which housed a café and a queer friendly community space for young artists who needed a place to rehearse with their band, hold exhibitions, poetry nights, left-wing political discussions, or simply just serve as a space to come to make friends in. She rode a scooter to work, had short hair, wore jeans, and unapologetically demanded to take up space in a deeply patriarchal city. Towards the end of my trip, Sabeen was shot and killed in her car. A day before my flight back to Europe, I went to her funeral held at T2F, crowded by loved ones and acquaintances who admired her. Her murderers were eventually caught, and admitted to targeting her for her feminism and politics.

A decade went by before I visited again, in February of 2025. A lot of things had changed: a new generation of kids had come up in the scene, less scared of being outwardly queer or trans. New venues and art galleries had opened up (there is a techno scene in Karachi now!), and with it, a bigger audience for contemporary art. A friend of a friend started an all-women soccer team. My friends said it was baby steps.

The black kites – Karachi's signature bird of prey – would hover over Clifton beach at dawn, circling the abandoned high-rises that had been left to crumble mid construction, looking for a shaded spot to cool down. I felt Sabeen everywhere. I hope that she is proud.