A non-profit association, Brief Shalimar is committed to building communities through artistic and cultural activations, especially in the Asian and Anglophone diaspora space in Paris. Their activations run via volunteerships, sponsorships, and value-exchange partnerships.

Halfway Garden recalls the gulshan of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, the garden that recurs in his poetry as a site of longing, promise, and deferred spring, while simultaneously playing off the notion of the halfway house, a place of transition, of being neither fully here nor there. Together, they evoke the liminality of the diaspora and expat experience, a garden constantly in the making, between homelands.

The selected artists engage with questions of identity, belonging, cultural memory, and contemporary social realities through practices that are both locally grounded and globally relevant. The exhibition invites the viewer to simply sit and reflect on a variety of contemporary political movements, their demands and their needs. Movements ranging from the Pakistani feminist protests in 2019 “Aurat March” (Women’s March) to the feminist protests in Paris. It invites us to question our role in actively moulding and reforming institutions assumed to be concrete and infallible, through solidarity, raising our voices and some caustic commentary.