Dil Dil Trans-Pakistan (Heart, Heart Trans-Pakistan)

A digital exhibition exploring the research of interdisciplinary visual artist, Umber Majeed.

In the heart of this project, Majeed turns to her own familial history and archives as the conceptual basis for her project—particularly, her uncle’s failed tourism company ‘Trans-Pakistan,’ which she has digitally reimagined as “Trans-Pakistan Adventure Services.” Another point of inspiration is Bahria Town, the privately-owned real estate developments found throughout Pakistan. Within Lahore’s iteration of Bahria Town, European landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and Trafalgar Square reify Western interests, but remain cloaked in a pervasive, Islamic security apparatus. Throughout her serial project, Majeed reinterprets these built environments as speculative, exploratory spaces for examining prevailing logics around race, gender, sexuality, and capital.

This page offers a speculative tour of Bahria Town’s developments by way of animations, interactive web environment, and research making gated properties and elaborate replicas of Western monuments accessible to the poor, displaced, and noncitizen alike.

Umber Majeed (b. New York, 1989) is a multidisciplinary visual artist and educator. She received her MFA from Parsons the New School for Design in 2016 and graduated from Beaconhouse National University in Lahore, Pakistan in 2013. Her writing, animation, and installations engage with familial archives to explore Pakistani state, urban, and digital infrastructure through a feminist lens. Majeed has shown in and worked with venues across Pakistan, North America, and Europe. Majeed has had three solo exhibitions; ‘In the Name of Hypersurface of the Present’, Rubber Factory, New York (2018) and ‘Trans-Pakistan Zindabad (Facts about the Earth)’, 1708 Gallery, Richmond, Virgina (2021), and ‘Made in Trans-Pakistan’, Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, NY. She is a recipient of numerous fellowships including the HWP Fellowship, Ashkal Alwan, Beirut, Lebanon (2017), Refiguring Feminist Futures Web Residency, Akademie Schloss Solitude & ZKM, Germany (2018), the Digital Earth Fellowship, Hivos, the Netherlands (2018-19), and the Technology Residency, Pioneer Works, Brooklyn (2020). Currently,  she is a Queens Museum- Jerome Fellow for 2024-25.