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Review
An Easier Route from Pakistan to India
‘Place’ is a show of Pakistani and Indian artists at Anant Art Gallery. It is relevant not because the works in the show are making any direct comments or critique of the current Indo-Pak political scenario of terror or fighting terror, but it provides the platform where a dialogue can take place, where listening to each other is possible, where articulations can co-exist, says John Xaviers.
What would an art theorist write when a group of illegal combatants who crossed the Arabian Sea to reach the shores of Bombay have held the pride of the Indian soil to ransom at a five-star level siege! To say that marine commandos slithering down from a chetak helicopter is not art and it is too early to theorize the series of television events is very escapist. How one can think about the luxury of art, when many hundreds of innocents have lost their lives and many thousands of relatives and friends of the trapped are anxiously spending every minute of their lives! But it is precisely at this time, that one should look for alternative modes of dialogue and art is the most convenient platform where humans can unite during troubled times, because art, whether political or non-political deals with the primary emotional responses of the humankind.
Abdullah Syed, Haider Ali Jan, Ismet Khwaja, Roohi Ahmed, Unam Babar, Shoaib Mahmood, Muhammad Atif Khan…these are not the names of some suspected terrorists. These are the names of some artists who are showing their works in India. Latika Gupta has curated a show involving Pakistani and Indian artists titled ‘Place’ in Contemporary Art Space of Anant Art Gallery in Lado Sarai. The initiative of the young curator and that of the gallery to bring together the young talents of the sub-continent irrespective of national differences is very relevant at this historical juncture, particularly at this hour of catastrophe, which was totally unanticipated when the show opened. The curator describes the relevance of the title ‘Place’ in her wall text, “Identities are born of the specificities of place, especially in Pakistan and India where histories, politics and versions of place result in constant shape-shifting, both literal and metaphoric.”
While Abdullah Syed, Haider Ali Jan, Ismet Khwaja, Roohi Ahmed, Unam Babar are showing in the curated show ‘Place’ along with upcoming Indian talents like Sandip Pisalkar, two other artists Shoaib Mahmood and Muhammad Atif Khan are having solo shows in the nearby old Anant gallery, namely ‘Betwixt’ and ‘Sweet Dreams’ respectively. In ‘Betwixt’ Shoaib Mahmood is playing with the Mughal miniature images of Jehangir juxtaposed with sporting figures wearing Nike outfits, most commonly doing a Ronaldhino soccer dribble, rendered in very high level of miniature draughtsmanship. In ‘Sweet Dreams’ Muhammad Atif Khan is playing with the images of bees and ants, as if surrounded around a sweet, in which very high draughtsmanship is visible in the drawing of ants and bees on one layer of acrylic sheet overlaid on the acrylic sheet pasted with the images of cookies and other sweets and some times red hearts. It is important to observe the articulations, whether political or non-political, of the young artists of the sub-continent to have alternative understanding of our time-period, besides the pictures flooded in the mainstream corporate media.
In the show ‘Place’, there are at least two artists who are visibly political. Abdullah Syed plays with the iconic image of Jinnah. In an installation titled ‘Flying Mattress’, which displays amazing origami skills, currency notes are folded in geometric shapes and connected as a series of tessellation, reminiscent of Islamic tile-work and hung like a carpet. On display are two photographs of the installation. In another origami installation, currency notes are folded into hexagons and repeated like a tile-work displaying the iconic face of Jinnah on the surface, in different colours. On display are the photographs. In another set of works, which look like serigraphs, the iconic face of Jinnah is printed in the tricolours of Indian national flag.
Another artist on show who is very political, from the Indian part of the sub-continent is Sandip Pisalkar. A pair of footwear, titled ‘Paduka’, which is a quotation from the archaic Indian footwear made of wood consisting of a sole and a toe-grip, presumably worn by Gandhiji, is rendered in hardware elements of computer, like motherboard circuits and other parts like DVD tray. The circles with copper-coils for the electro-magnetics of the computing device suddenly look like dharmachakra! In an interactive installation, which prints Satyameva Jayate in many regional languages of India including English, on copper foil, there is an embossing offset equipment fitted on the exquisitely carved wooden architectural elements. The visitors are encouraged to operate the machine and take away the copper foil that they have printed with Satyameva Jayate in vernaculars and lingua franca.
Not all works on show are political, but many are very engaging for the very materiality of the artworks. Unum Babar makes very interesting origami forms as well as kinetic mini sculptural forms like a rotating bunch of flowers or mini-models of ceiling fans. In some of the works, the paper assumes architectural dimensions in the unfolding of forms within it. An installation consists of two jars. One has a golden fish swimming around in water. The other jar is empty. Below the jar with fish, there is a video display of water being drained out as in a wash-basin. Suddenly, one feels like the water in jar is drained out and the gold-fish will die. Meanwhile, below the empty jar, there is a video display of a gold-fish swimming around. It is a play with real being confronting virtual nothingness and real nothingness confronting virtual being.
Mekhala Bahl has inscribed scribbles and scratches on otherwise empty surfaces. Desire Machine Collective consisting of Mrigang Madukalliya and Sonal Jain have come up with single channel video installations. Haider Ali Jan has rendered long panels of digital prints juxtaposing vector graphic laughing male images on the photographs of narrow inroads within congested architectural jungles of the metro. Roohi Anmed has made prints reminiscent of botanical drawings. Ismet Khwaja’s video installation ‘Blow Glow Chants’ has a sound track with simultaneous male-female voices chanting similar sounding words, with the visual of posterized duotone video of a boy getting haircut juxtaposed with the text denoting the sound that is chanted. All these works show the variety of means and meanings with which young artists express themselves.
The curated show ‘Place’ and solo shows by Shoaib Mahmood and Muhammad Atif Khan in Anant, are important, not because they are making any direct comments or critique of the current Indo-Pak political scenario of terror or fighting terror, but it is the platform where a dialogue can take place, where listening to each other is possible, where articulations can co-exist. While going through the Pakistani articulations in Anant art gallery, one starts to wonder, isn’t the channels of art gallery an easier route to India, than hijacking fishing boats in high seas, if coming to India is so important!
