MY NATIVE LAND:

The relationship between globalism and its complex intersections with the discursive constructions of nationhood continuously reshape our understanding of the self and society and demands a close attention. Issues of national identity are crucial to the creation of art under globalization, thereby turning artists into cultural ambassadors. Moreover, popular discussions on contemporary art almost invariably centre on issues of identities and touches significantly on the artists’ location in answering questions of identity while exploring human space. Perhaps the rise of these ‘new’ forms of critiquing/questioning/representing national identities can be explained as a response and reaction to globalisation forces.
Pakistanis in general and Pakistani artists in particular have been preoccupied with the very issue of ‘identity’ ever since the Partition of the subcontinent in 1947 and now under current political turmoil the issues of identity (national, cultural, religious, e.t.c) have become even more crucial. Ever since the incident of Sept 11th 2001, the expansion of media coverage has resulted in an increased interest in the country’s image, as the western diatribe against the Islamic world escalate. The country’s politics makes a fine spectacle with war looking over international affairs, an unpopular new president, a tanking economy, poverty, illiteracy, corruption, political instability, international interference, terrorism, religious extremism, over-population, unemployment, extremist suicide bombings, disturbing relationships with allies along with the displacement of tens of thousands of citizens by the catastrophic earthquakes and floods in the recent past.
Set against such a backdrop, the contemporary language of art in Pakistan is shaped by these existential crises and the task of their representation, conveying the stifled feelings that artists experience as individuals or as a nation and is also the subject of Ruby Chishti’s recent show Placed, Displaced, Misplaced, exhibited at Rohtas 2, from Dec 6th to 18th, 2010. Ruby is an artist most famous for her immensely powerful (intimate) narratives fabricated with ordinary/junk materials such as; straw, cotton wool, plastic bags, old clothes and newspapers, focused on her gendered relationship to the medium. Whereas, issues of displacement and this investigation into/commentary on the plight of the country displayed in her current body of work at Rohtas is a new interest for Ruby, though the medium remains the same. Both bodies of work (old and new), in the most simplified sense, are representations of the self, except the current work situates her individual ‘I’ within a collective ‘we’. Perhaps its the invariably negative images evoked at the mention of Pakistan, resulting in an increasingly dark portrait of the country (labeled as the most dangerous place in the world by some), that after eight years of living in the US, Ruby has now felt the need to address the troubled identity of her native land.

Chishti, Ruby, Map of My native Land,

42 x 54", Cloth, foam, wood, thread, foam, 2010

Chishti, Ruby, Portrait,

Cloth, thread, plastic, metal, foam

2010.

One of the works in the show, titled, Map of My Native Land, is an assemblage of cloth with hand-stitched minarets and other recognizable elements of Islamic architecture in green and white, confined within a gold ornate frame. Contrary to the proportion of white and green on the flag, here the white that symbolizes religious minorities dominates the green, yet the clutter of minarets and arches appear to be more noticeable and imposing, criticizing the illusion that religion and force can hold people together in the face of injustice and lack of democracy. Similarly, in Portrait, the prototypes of the Islamic arch reappear with a pair of hand-stitched scissors, possibly referring to the phrase; “running with scissors”, meaning; ‘playing with fire’/to endanger one’s self or perhaps, it also refers to the common superstition; that snapping scissors in the house causes contention and hatred among family members. The scissors, in this situation, appear to be in the hands of the corrupt Islamists rallying conflict, discrimination, injustice and intolerance.

Chishti, Ruby, Domestic Birds, Variable

Cloth, thread, plastic, metal, foam

2010.

Termite, Variable, Cloth, thread, metal, foam

2010

Alongside critiquing the extent of misuse of religion for political reasons, Ruby also tries to present an overview of some other unfavorable conditions prevalent in Pakistan today, such as the displacement of the flood victims and the presence of one of the largest refugee populations in the world. On one hand, Domestic Birds, is a piece that sympathizes with both victims; the unfortunate refugees and the flood-hit citizens. While on the other hand, Termite, a clutter of little tents, made of wire and cloth, in a corner of the gallery, growing along the wall, is possibly a comment on the destructive role of the refugees, implying that these Taliban turned Afghan refugees are destroying the country like a house eaten out by termites. Or perhaps, the little tents simply denote the thousands displaced by the floods and just as tired wood is helpless before an onslaught of termites, the weak structure of the Pakistani state is utterly helpless in coping with the unprecedented escalation in the number of those needing assistance. However, such associations were not fully articulated. I can’t seem to settle whether it’s the unnecessary repetition in expressing these ideas or the lack of a climax or a superficial investigation of the subject or a generalized over view of the present or an attempt to address too many issues in one body of work or an imbalance between an engagement with the medium versus engagement with the subject matter, that seems disturbing despite the fact that the work provides the right clues for accessing it. Nevertheless, this is only the beginning of an exciting body of work, engaging with issues that have a profound impact on the way we operate in relation to the socio-political reality of our everyday lives.

Chishti, Ruby, Placed, Displaced, Misplaced,

Variable, Cloth, thread, foam

2010

Is it Art Activism?

We live in an age where the word ‘ART’ no longer means painting, drawing and sculpture alone. New methods of making art have been introduced and used since the early 1900s, in order to produce new results and therefore recast the role of the artist from a person making aesthetically pleasing objects to a revolutionary, overthrowing rather than enlightening. Performance Art is one such medium that explores the possibilities for art to intervene in humanitarian crisis through a language related easily to the common language of the streets. Performance art is an off-spring of conceptual and fluxus art movements, that originated in the mid 20th Century in the West to challenge traditional ways of making and looking at art, to break down conventional ideas about "what art is," and to minimize the distance between art and the everyday.
On the other hand, art from Pakistan has for the most part, been occupied with traditional mediums. However, this decade has seen the development of a form that may not be ‘Performance Art’, per se, but nonetheless it marks the beginning of an engagement with performative art practice that explores the possibilities for a pro-active engagement with the socio-political issues while reconfiguring the status and function of art from passivity to active agency and direct confrontation.
Pakistanis in general and Pakistani artists in particular have been preoccupied with the very issue of ‘identity’ ever since the Partition of the subcontinent and now under current political turmoil the issues of identity and its representation have become even more crucial, resulting in an interest for a self-defined identity.
Self-representation’s most literal form is self-portraiture, which is the equivalent of autobiography in literature. Both narrate a self that ‘we want to be/present’ rather than a true likeness of ourselves, hence both are a kind of a self-conscious performance. It is this performative relationship between self-portraiture and autobiography that has made performance an appropriate medium for contemporary Pakistani artists for an inquiry into the construction of the self, in order to redefine identity (caught between the forces of socio-economic modernization and religious orthodoxy), to liberate the self from traditionally bound situations and to expand the modes of self representation through a process of self-knowledge and self-telling.
Folowing are some of the many examples;

Bani Abidi’s The News (2001):

Abidi, Bani, The News, still from video, 4:24 sec, 2001.

Abidi enacts Indian and Pakistani official newsreaders, in a four and a half minutes long video, reading the news on state run channels of the respective countries. The news bulletin relates an inconsequential neighborly dispute extended to a hostile enmity between a Pakistani and an Indian over the ownership of an egg, up in arms, the neighbors charge one another with the offense of theft. One speaks literary classical Hindi and the other austere Persian Urdu, employing cultural references in language and costume (the Pakistani newsreader covering her head, reminds one of the PTV days while the Indian newsreader wearing a sari makes references to the doordarshan television), the differences of nationality have been emphasized.
Abidi plays both women, stressing her close familial ties with the neighboring countries. She addresses the question of more than one identification of the body in negotiating between self and other, while renouncing a claim over either national identity. Her physical presence in the work increases the importance of this extensive subjectivity of the artist. Abidi demonstrates identity’s performative approach to self-actualization in a continuous replacement of her Pakistani self by her Indian self and vice versa. She challenges the notion of the portrait as a simplified likeness of one’s self and the impossibility of representing a true self. None as well as both images conform to truth, claiming a new identity brought forth by this union of congenital and the adopted.

Abidi’s critique on the construction of history and identity in post-Partition psyche, demonstrated in her non-sensical conflicts with herself, reminds one of Saadat Hassan Manto’s ‘Toba Tek Singh’. Like Toba Tek Singh, Abidi is also a victim of the violence and collective madness caused by the partition. The use of humor for both, is a tool for practicing authority, as Freud writes “humor is not resigned, its rebellious – the ability to laugh at something allows you to demonstrate your control over it”.

Nilofar Akmut’s They Came Home to Roost (2006):
In this live performance, carried out in the red light district of Lahore, Akmut re-evaluates the question of a national identity in the wake of an accelerated process of economic interaction among countries and cultures.
Akmut demonstrates her deep disenchantment with the fact that the evils of the ‘colonial system’, instead of disappearing with political decolonization, not only persist, but have worsened. Prominent among the several of colonialism’s lasting manifestations is the varieties of what came to be known as the ‘colonization of the mind’. She seems to suggest that the post-colonial identity in the wake of globalization is actually a continuation of colonialism, but through different or new relationships concerning power and control. Today Pakistan is neither sovereign, nor independent or democratic. As Faiz Ahmed Faiz in his poem Dawn of Freedom (Subh-e-Azaadi) (August 1947) writes:
Yeh daagh daagh ujala, yeh shub gazida sehar
Who intizaar tha jiska, yeh who sehar toh nahin
Yeh who sehar toh nahin
jis ki arzo lay kar Chalay thay yaar
kay mil jaye gi kahin na kahin

Abhee girani-e-shub men kami nahin aye
Nijat-e-dida-o-dil ki ghari nahin aye
Chale chalo keh who manzil abhee nahin aye

Akmut, Nilofar, They Came Home to Roost, stills from live performance, 2006.

Akmut’s performance raises questions about the role of artists/practice of art in contributing to a constructive dialogue that might lead to the democratization of the cultural space and also help the audience and artist to negotiate the boundaries of freedom of expression.











Mehr Javed’s Altar (2007):
Forr a duration of 100 minutes Javed sits as a living sculpture inside a squarish niche built in one of the gallery walls. The audience was invited to decorate an ellaborate hairdo that was masking her face, with pearl pins resting on a ledge in front of the bust. This use of her body as an object creates a hybrid of sculpture and performance and challenges art’s static nature and viewers’ passive looking. In a complex interplay between imitation and the original, Javed represents the representational strategies of art objects while attaching the process of represented subjectivity to the very materiality of her body, asking the viewer to think of art and the nature of artistic enterprise anew while removing barriers between art and life.

Javed, Mehr, still from live performance Altar, 2007.

The open invitation to put pins in her hair is an expression of intimacy, allowing a sensuous contact between the viewer and the viewed, challenging the traditional divisions between art and audience, exploring what art is/can do for the fulfillment of the artist’s impulse to express/communicate. Here the role of the viewer changes from a removed observer to an engaged participant, demonstrating how self is continuously produced and reproduced anew through actions performed by others, denying the autonomy of selfhood.

stills from Altar

Amber Hamad’s Untitled series (2002):
What might be a primal dress-up urge for young girls, is the personification of the unconscious as well as a critique of the gendered definitions of womanhood and gendered difference in fairytales for Hammad. Trapped in between childhood and maturity in a surreal dream world, these pictures also reflect a withdrawal from creating works within the confines of pre-existing genres to liberate artistic expression from social control. This demonstration points to the construction of the supposed autonomous self as nothing more than a discontinuous series of stereotypes provided by the culture, in a reversal of the terms of art and autobiography. These masks of passive, dependent, beautiful, slumbering princesses, clamped over her face are metaphorically charged with mimetic signifiers of womanhood. These tales of patriarchal moral codes, in which women are pious, good and forgiving, suffering in silence without getting much in return for an unhappy life.

Hammad, 4/7 from untitled series, 60 x 40",  digital print, 2002.

The above interventions, borne out of a self-conscious rebelliousness, are centered on the belief that art can be a catalyst for change and their shared concerns open up possibilities for a pro-active engagement with the socio-political issues through a transfer of power. The works discussed in this study are simplified representations that often function as punch lines addressed to the lay-men, in trying to explore the possibilities for art to intervene in humanitarian crisis through encouraging and educating the populace. Dissolving the distinctions between high and low art, social and artistic hierarchies, this approach to art making develops innovative strategies for narrating the need for a social responsibility. It is an attempt to establish a role for art, similar to the radical role of poetry and literature during trying times in the past, when lyrical expression enlightened, stimulated and even mobilized the masses to the government’s dismay. Because of the way such art extends itself in the everyday life and because of the responsibility it claims, it no longer is a mere pleasant divergence or a pastime activity for the gentility, but a call for attention and resistance, a method borrowed from the street theater ideology that addresses the masses directly. It is not an attempt to describe, but to encourage a dialogue about the definition of both, selfhood and Art.