Suleman, an art professor in Karachi’s Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, told ARTnews, the biennale “has completely ditched me as an artist and abandoned my work.”

The biennial said in a statement, “We feel that despite the artist’s perspective, it is not compatible with the ethos of KB19 whose theme is ‘Ecology and the Environment,’ and feel that politicizing the platform will go against our efforts to bring art into the public and drawing artists from the fringe to the mainstream cultural discourse.”

In response to the removal, artists and human rights activists across the country have called on the biennial to address what they are calling censorship. On Monday, in a bid to save the exhibit, protesters staged a die-in among the tombstones that remained on view. Images of the protest spread widely on Twitter. By late Tuesday, Suleman’s entire Biennale work had been taken away from the exhibition.

Amnesty International South Asia, a prominent human rights group, tweeted that the organization was “horrified by this disturbing attack on freedom of expression.” A Google Document penned by activists soon followed. “The censorship of Suleman’s work has made it clear to us that our public spaces are anything but free,” the activists wrote in their circulated statement. As of Tuesday, more than 100 artists have signed the open letter.

Suleman said that she witnessed controversies of this sort in Pakistan often, but that she had remained hopeful that there could one day be greater freedom of expression in her country. Now, however, she was less sure. “We have seen censorship in the past, but in recent years things had been better,” she said. “This opened my eyes again. This shows the power art has in a country like Pakistan—they couldn’t take it for even two hours. Pakistan can talk about air pollution and water pollution—but corruption of mind and memory? That will be censored.”

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