PAINTING WITH WORDS

“Once upon a time… in a land not so far, far away.. there lived a girl called miniature painting… She was a delicate yet seductive girl… not just beautiful but an accomplished story teller (a magic realist).. But one day her father, fearing her charms, locked her up in the basement of their home with the only facility of cable TV. At first she wept and wept … then she danced to the tunes of mtv and bollypop … and read the book. She debated it endlessly with the mirror till she felt faint, the frail thing that she was … But, alas, now there was no one around to even find this endearing … She missed being loved and sought after … once lively, and vibrant, her colour faded and as the year passed, the lustre left her. She was sad and lonely and her imagination was failing her… And finally she began to think about beauty and intellect … which did she love more?"

view of the gallery walls.

The vinyl lettering pasted on the walls of the gallery, tells this story of loss of innocence or rather loss of ignorance in Ayesha Jatoi’s new work titled ‘Mirror Mirror’. “Where ignorance is a bliss, tis folly to be wise”, perhaps ignorance IS a bliss, perhaps in lack of knowledge lies happiness, but this corruption of a sheltered mind is merely a fact of circumstances and not a choice made by the protagonist of Jatoi’s story. The work has a twofold (or perhaps three or fourfold) thematic value; to understand the development of history painting into a contemporary form that has spurred vigorous debate, as well as a critique of the gendered definitions of womanhood and gendered differences in fairytales, where women find themselves entrapped in ‘chambers’ of actual or perceived perimeters and the ‘mirror’ (as the title suggests) is the controlling metaphor that represents the mediated reflections, almost impossible to shatter to be replaced by a truer mirror in order to reveal a real or natural self. ‘She’ is perhaps an inventive alter ego for Jatoi’s identity as a miniature artist who at the same time is not medium specific but her work nevertheless is in dialogue with this very art form, hence working/living in-between mediums/selves, marking differences while the boundaries are under continuous negotiations. What sort of a new identity comes out of this union of the inherent and the acquired? (for both Jatoi and Miniature painting) I was quite curious about the nature of the book that ‘She’ read after she wept and wept, but ‘reading’ I guess is synonymous to possessing a deeper awareness here.

This show of miniature painting, without a display of pretty paintings of exquisite beauty and color encased in ornate frames, questions/critiques/defines/redefines what miniature is, a question worth asking. Is it an art of the book associated with its long standing history, hence defining the scale? Is it the laborious practice of pardakh? Is it only done on a wasli with a brush made of fine squirrel hair? Is it a certain kind of imagery or subject matter? Is it only about clinging to an exotic otherness to be accepted and viewed internationally? Etcetra, etcetra. In answer to that, right outside the entrance to the gallery, on a white pedestal, is placed a book enclosed in an acrylic box, opened to the page that explains the origins of the word ‘miniature’; which is derived from the Latin word ‘minium’, meaning red lead, along with its historical background. This information in the book is painstakingly crafted in very very small handwriting done with a lead pencil (or perhaps a siah kalam) by Jatoi. Concerning the politics of representation of Pakistani art, the neo-miniature, that has unleashed an interest unwitnessed in the past in this art form, “has deeply altered the practices of many Pakistani artists and altered the reading/viewing of public’s general views about art to a great extent” (Mirza, 2008, pg 58), about which there has been an inconclusive debate about its supplementary role in reinforcing cliché’s about Pakistan or Islam. If ‘Contemporary Art’ (as defined by Danto, Belting, Navarra and many others) is an end of reliance on a cohesive set of aesthetic problems for ‘a’ period in art history and is believed to be more of a social phenomenon or a tool for communication, depending on the effects of globalization, altering the maps of cultural geographies, then do we really need to invest in rooting artistic mediums in local cultures, histories and geographies?

This use of language evokes the experience of viewing and understanding of the subject for the reader/viewer, developing a visual investigation with written language, whose history can be traced back to the Conceptualists’ extensive inclusion of long/detailed titles concluding into the title itself being the work. It is hard to discuss the legitimacy of an art object when we are 40 years ahead of the times in which all hierarchies of an Art object have been rejected, transcending the traditional categories of painting, sculpture, photography, film e.t.c, rejecting all notions of right and wrong, giving the artist the complete authority to employ anything that he/she decides to entitle ‘Art’.
In The End (that speaks of recovery but nor relief) she returns home wiser.

-Mirza, Quddus, Show me the Money, 2008, Art India (art news magazine of India) volume XIII/ issue I/ quarter I.

Artist As Critic; Rethinking The Purpose of Art.

As an art student at NCA and later on as well, my work has been hugely criticized for its ephemeral and non-sellable nature. I was told, if I think of Art as a profession for myself, but engage in work/jobs other than art-making to support my practice and myself, then I shall consider Art a hobby instead. I use to think, if making money was a concern, then I wouldn’t have made this choice. Also, being an old fashioned woman, the idea of the starving, struggling, unrecognized artist is so gloriously compelling to me :p and almost a prerequisite of course that I didn’t pay much attention to the business-minded and just nodded away. but Saira Ansari doesn’t!
Her recent show at Grey Noise, entitled 'the work that will probably never end', asks, tough important questions about the intricacies of making, showing, framing and selling of Art. “She feels there is a contrived idea of what art and creativity should be and many artists find themselves adhering to these commercially viable stereotypes. Ansari uses this project as a platform to question the ethics of these politics and the mercenary attitude of the galleries in Pakistan, which she believes, behave more like shops and less as promoters of art and creativity” (project description from the email invite).

Artistic activity in part is a response to the invitation to ‘produce’. Subjected to the pressures of the market, most artists tend to make compromises with the medium, form, and content of their work, producing commodities rather than art objects. Or is it a coincidence that most (read all) of the contemporary Pakistani art is in the tradition of miniature art practice with veiled female bodies in confined claustrophobic spaces, depiction of bearded men with guns and fanciful arabesque patterns? Such artists are in one way or the other conforming to the demands of the market through making works that have started looking alike with very little variations. There certainly is a need for a critical inspection of developments in the politics of representation and the role of artists, curators and galleries in this demonstration. In that context Ansari’s contribution to the activity of ‘production’ is an absence of objects. She has decided to mail empty boxes/cartons of varying sizes to almost all art galleries in Pakistan as a polite declaration of her ‘objection’. The box is only a premise for the non-existence of the work, its emptiness refers to ‘absence’ as an evidence of the inability of (her) art expression to have meaningful existence under present conditions. This recalcitrance in the face of art authorities is begging for artistic autonomy from the institutions that attempt to frame it according to their needs. “The idea is to poke them”, says Ansari (during a public talk at the opening of the exhibition).

In order of priority, Ansari’s work is concerned with the critical discourse rather than formal issues, hence I am not going to talk about the aesthetics/quality of the works exhibited, although I do feel that, in trying to fill this gap between thought and its execution, Ansari has filled the gallery with an overwhelming amount of notes, sketches, text and boxes, which certainly needs much editing.
A similar reaction to the commodification of art, was seen during the conceptual art movement in the late 60s and early 70s in the West, that critically subverted the gallery as the location, determiner, owner and distributor of art. The movement has had a tremendous influence on artists’ publications that substantially helped to facilitate this connection between authorship and authority. Ansari’s work punctuated with question marks (both literally and metaphorically) remains within the realm of criticism, which due to a lack of critical writing have remained unanswered. A turn towards theoretical issues will certainly help answer some very important questions, but what Ansari’s public talk (however brief) at the exhibition did, her work did not do, she might want to re-consider the relation between content and its execution.
It is probably too early in the life of this project to pass any judgments, as the name suggests, this project will carry on for the rest of Ansari’s life and she will continue to engage with upcoming shows by other artists at Grey Noise. It will be interesting to see the shape it takes during the course and the responses it will generate from the curators and other artists, as the nature of the project hugely relies on its reception. If lucky, what we might see after this is the beginning of the formation of friends and foes. Hopefully, people with common interests will begin to form alliances in order to examine the purpose of making art and to interrogate the nature of cultural production, starting a dialogue in the best interest of the given conditions of art, for a much needed revolution.

Ansari's will be online soon after the opening and photographs, videos, discussions and commentary can be accessed at www.thesaproject.wordpress.com.