House # 38-13th St, Defence Housing Authority, Karachi (Intercommunication Devices)

This series of digital vector drawings from photographs addresses what Bani Abidi calls “exclusionary architec-ture,” or structures that, in her words, are “generated by heavy doses of fear that we consume daily.” Abidi photo-graphed intercoms found on the front gates of houses in the Defence neighborhood of Karachi—a housing complex built in the 1950s by the Pakistani army to house retired military personnel; it is in what is now one of Karachi’s most affluent areas. These devices mediate between the private space of the powerful and the public space of the increasingly disempowered. Presenting the intercoms as high-tech, seductive forms, Abidi underscores the seeming banality of environments constructed to contain or exclude systemic threat.