Connection is everything to Paris-based Pakistani artist and facilitator Abdullah (Abi) Tariq ‘09. While his life hasn’t followed a straightforward path—“I always knew I would be unconventional”—there is still an undeniable flow to his journey. Individual moments in his story elucidate how each decision propelled him to where he is now.

FROM TRADITIONAL PAKISTAN TO INNOVATIVE LAS
Abi has long known that he is different and has embraced this quality. While he could have taken the traditional path and continued to attend one of hundreds of Cambridge-system schools in Pakistan (with a focus on rote learning), he instead looked for alternatives. When his bold admissions essays gave him a choice of international boarding schools, it was his connection to Switzerland, through family in Geneva, that swayed him toward LAS. 

It was here in Leysin that he made his next key connection. Abi credits one faculty member in particular with playing a significant role in who he became. Kim Cope Tait (an author, yogini, mother, surfer, seeker, educator, and healing arts practitioner) was an English teacher at LAS at that time. Finding a mentor like her, one who enabled a free-spirited approach, was crucial to Abi’s development.

“She lit my spiritual fire, and it will be lit forever.”

Ms. Cope Tait introduced him to yoga, meditation, and poetry, and her multi-disciplinary interests are mirrored in Abi’s description of his own style—an overlap of “magic, spirituality, and absurdity.”

EXPANDING TO THE WORLD OF ART
When Abi started making art, he began to explore ‘conceptual art’; beyond the retinal, cerebral art, the art of ideas and language. His 2018 piece New Gravity is described as a “mind sculpture—a thought that births a fictive reality in your mind for just a moment, or longer if you choose to hold it there.” The role of art is thus to inspire change, open new perspectives, and celebrate difference. Difference is an element that is abundantly reflected in Abi’s life. He thinks positively about being different and remembers how he was accepted without question at LAS. “LAS takes you for who you are. There was never any judgment because difference is expected in such an international community.” 

Descending the ski slopes for the first time felt like a dream to Abi, and it would have been easy to be overwhelmed by unfamiliarity. Instead, he saw togetherness all around him. “In that group, we were all just 16, going through the same thing at the same time, living the same experiences and growing together.” 

Broader differences within our culture, such as power, privilege, vulnerability, and social expectation, are all examined in Abi’s art and his personal expression. Speaking about his manicured hands, “You never see silver nails on a Pakistani.” But in his view, societal codes are made to be broken.

BREAKING NORMS TO BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER
Breaking societal codes was a little trickier to do in the “real world”, after LAS. To be somewhere far less international after the utopia of LAS was tough, but he knew he had to work hard to get what he wanted from life.

Taking his first steps after higher education, Abi started out in the creative world and joined Australian visual artist Honi Ryan in 2015 to help grow her Silent Dinners project—a series of performance art events that has spread from Australia to a dozen different countries.

Each Silent Dinner features between two and 200 participants who come together for a meal without speaking, reading, or writing for a two-hour period. The resulting “social sculptures” become statements on globalization, multiculturalism, and the power of communication.
 

FROM INITIAL CONNECTION TO TRUE COMMUNITY
Silent Dinners and the desire to facilitate experiences for people laid the foundation for the next direction in Abi’s life. He got involved with AFIELD, an international network of cultural changemakers formed in 2014, that supports and connects visionaries worldwide who empower their communities.

Gradually, Abi “graduated” from being an artist—though he knows and loves that he will always be one—and is today the Director of Programs and Community Manager at the heart of the AFIELD network. He guides knowledge exchange and community building by bringing together artists, thinkers, and changemakers.

Even with such creative-sounding roles, AFIELD’s work is far from abstract—network members are “grassroots practitioners who creatively solve social problems.” They interact directly with their communities, learning from each other and addressing real problems in innovative ways. 

DRIVING TOWARD IMPACT
It may not come as a surprise that the artist in him still cares about how his work is perceived, but Abi isn’t after fame or recognition. Instead, he talks about the importance of children seeing real and tangible change in their communities through his projects and others. “People go to a nine-to-five job and they are doing something that’s not really making the world a better place. I want to question the system, to make a bigger impact.”

One of his impactful AFIELD collaborators is fellow Pakistani Yasmeen Lari, who became her country’s first female architect in the 1960s. In 1980, she co-founded the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan to conserve historic monuments and heritage sites across the country. 

At 81 years old, Yasmeen is still working with communities, helping create carbon-zero villages of flood-resistant houses in remote areas. Abi is full of praise for the way she has shifted her own professional role since retiring from architectural practice in 2000 to continue making an impact on the community. 

As he talks about the other projects being carried out by AFIELD members, it’s clear that Abi shares many of the same passions as Yasmeen. From the Palestinian Heirloom Seed Library, which preserves crop biodiversity, to book exchanges in Indonesia, his mantra of cause and effect, of flow, remains the same. “Question the system and innovate solutions to make the world a better place.” In bringing together people who can challenge the norm, Abi has found his own way to flow from art to advocacy for the role that artists play in making a tangible impact in society.
 

 

 

Read the full Panorama here