Like most arts organisations, The Pind Collective saw a period of inactivity as lockdown restrictions were imposed last year, stalling all plans for in-person projects and pedagogical expansion. But the period also enabled its founders to view the collective not just as a means of generating artistic content, but also as one that provided a way to connect and reflect on the moment. “We realised that we function not just as a platform, but also as a community,” says Avani Tandon Vieira, one of the co-founders of the collective, which started in 2016, centred around a process of creation and response between artists from India and Pakistan, contemplating shared histories, identities and experiences. 

Driven by a need to reach out in this moment of collective crisis and incertitude, the founders sent open prompts to those they had collaborated with in the past. Their responses, innovative and thoughtful, made up the Collective’s Artists in Isolation project. Among these were a Karachi-based artist’s observations of everyday objects that became a part of routine activities like cooking and disinfecting groceries, with occasional rooftop views of the sunset during the lockdown, and attempts to create colour palettes out of them.