Born and raised in Lahore,
Haq received his Bachelors degree in Fine Arts in 2008 and a post graduate
diploma in Art Education in 2009 from the Beaconhouse National University in
Lahore. Only in a few years, Haq has earned a reputation for his rather unusual
way of thinking about and employment of the everyday objects and environments
in his work. He has exhibited in Pakistan, UK, Germany, India, Dubai and Moscow.
Haq is currently teaching at BNU and has recently been selected for a residency
at the prestigious Rijksakademie
in Amsterdam, starting in January 2014.
Here are
only a few snippets from a very long and enjoyable chat with Ehsan at his
studio.
RN: Lets start from the beginning. Tell us
about your artistic journey?
EH: I remember in 3rd grade when
my teacher asked everyone what they wanted to be, all the boys said that they
wanted to be a pilot and the girls said that they wanted to be a doctor, so
later on as I grew older I became more unsure as I wasn’t good at studies and
the whole charm of being a pilot and going into the army faded out also. I
don’t recall any profession that I wanted to opt for. But I was not very good
at studies, so I considered going to an art school. I had this impression that
you are not going to be studying too much and that its something more practical
and I enjoyed working with my hands. And I was lucky to have pursued it. I
applied to NCA for architecture because it was closer to engineering and will
get you a job because belonging to a middle class family that is a concern, and
I got rejected, after which like all my other friends who were applying for computer
sciences because that was the trend then, so I also gave a test at Punjab
University and I got selected and did that for a year and a half after which I
got really frustrated, so I decided to leave and give art school another shot
and went to Hunar Kada, they didn’t have architecture, so the second best thing
that gets you a 9 to 5 job is graphic
design and at that time I didn’t consider finearts as a career. After my first
year I realized that I enjoyed only making sculptures. So I decided to pursue
sculpture, without telling my parents because it would have been a big deal for
them, I’m their only son. And after three years at Hunar Kada, I got to know
about the fine arts program at BNU and transferred directly into the 3rd
year.
RN: so was it difficult to convince your
parents later on?
EH: It took some time, but they saw me
working very hard and I started to get commissions and when you are a student
and earning a little bit, it helps you make certain decisions and helps ease
your parents down a little bit. It helped my parents digest the idea. But even
now if my father tells someone what I do, he says its something like
engineering or architecture. Also because of the kind of projects I do. It
involves a multidisciplinary approach.
RN: yea, I was just going to say that you are
more of an engineer, who designs or manipulates machines. But besides
engineering, what is ‘art making’ for you or what does it mean to be an
‘artist’ for you?
EH: Initially that idea was very different and is still
changing, you get more confident along the way, more clearer. It's a very
strange question, I don’t know what else to do, I do this because probably I’m
not good at any other thing, or because I like it, I enjoy it, it teaches me,
its like exposing myself to learning, Through my work, I try to understand
what’s happening around me. Its like your third eye. It's a medium that helps
me be more aware of myself and my surroundings.
RN: Lets talk briefly about the ‘futility’ of your
machines, I don’t mean that as a derogatory term, they do have a function, but
perhaps a function in vain. Is that a comment on the futility of ‘Art’? Does
art have a purpose?
EH: well, does life have a purpose?!
RN:Oh that's
a good one, lets keep it at that
EH: the
purpose of art is perhaps to be more conscious of ourselves, our surroundings,
our actions, that's the purpose. To understand what I am, to understand my
surroundings, that's the purpose of life.
RN: And your machines are extremely mechanical, referring
back to the mechanism of the universe? And the choices and limitations that it
presents us with.
EH: When you see my work you see the existence of the
creator, you see that it has been put up/placed by someone. Its very much like
we believe in the existence of God through observing the universe. So I take up
the role of a god in my work. I enjoy that, for example when I made rooster,
for whom I created a situation (laid the feed around the gallery but chained
his leg so he can only move/eat within the parameters of a circle whose
diameter was defined by the length of the chain, creating a circle around the
rooster). I gave him certain limitations and certain options, so in a way it
wasn’t me who created the work it was the rooster.
Also, this is an answer to your earlier question;
what is art making to me, this is, you try and make yourself useful or you try
and make things complex or you try and find out about things, indulge, have a
good time, this is what art is, this is what life is.
RN: Reminds me of the Theatre of the Absurd and
Beckett in general and ‘waiting for
godot’ in particular. Also, there is
a strong parallel between installation and theater: both play to a viewer who
is expected to be at once immersed in the sensory/narrative experience that surrounds him and
maintain a degree of self-identity as a viewer, infact its more about the
viewer. Do you think of it that way?
EH: that's because humans are anthropocentric
by nature. Moses once asked God why you
have created this ugly creature called lizard (of course there was no
ecological understanding then) and God replied, you know what Moses, the lizard
was asking me the same thing about human beings, a moment ago.
Even the idea of ecology is very anthropocentric
RN: What is the process of creating an art
object? What are your methods of visualization?
EH: There are different ways that I approach
my work. Sometimes it starts with a sketch, or an idea and I complete it in my
thoughts and ask someone else to make it. Or I start executing it, and in that
process it transforms and sometimes after all the changes it comes back to the
very initial idea, some projects I do on 3d softwares and see how they look and
then execute it, so there is no one process. Its very much like how I don’t
follow any particular techniques in my work or any particular mediums. So they
look all different and I like that.
I think most of the thought process takes
place when I’m driving, I drive 3 or more hours a day, and when I’m driving I’m
not doing anything, its like meditation and your body is on auto, and you are
exposed to so many visuals, after every second the visuals change around you.
And that's where most of my work comes from, the life around. Sometimes what I
create is exactly the same as how it was in the real life, for example the
concrete cube in ‘Physical Existence of
Belief’ is exactly the cube I saw on the street or the installation for ‘Life is Elsewhere’ or the big cube made
out of sacks for the Moscow biennial, I made it as it was at some construction
site.
RN: Also, It seems like you are interested in
the allegorical or fable-esque manner of making sense of the world, it reflects
in your answers as well. And the works are simple yet very complex just like
the parables’ approach to philosophical investigations.
EH: with a physical approach towards them.
For example ‘Creation of Adam’ (two
stools on top of each other with an egg and a bulb, making it sort of an
incubator) is interested in a physical or rather logical approach amidst all
the other approaches to the creation of Adam. Sort of a Darwinian approach towards
it, so that's my method of exploration into such ideas.
RN: it made me think of another parable, ‘murghi pehlay aye ya andaa’. And
speaking of this connection between your work and the human condition or the
everyday life, I wonder if you are interested in blurring that boundary between
‘Art’ and the ‘everyday’? and if so, why is the work never displayed outside
the gallery in a more everyday setting?
EH: I look at art as a model of the real life, but not the
real life. Its like a video game, where the rules are the same as in real life,
when you punch someone the other person gets hurt and you loose some energy.
And it won’t work in an everyday setting, my tool is the gallery, I sometimes
make art out of readymade objects by just putting them in a gallery.
RN: So the gallery is the context in the duchampian sense?
EH: only ‘History
Lessons’ was not in a gallery
RN: but they were still at an art fair which gives it that
context.
EH: that too, but primarily because they were not readymade
objects or real donkeys, they were sculpted, so they could still be outside of
a gallery. I have to make it somehow, NOT a part of real life and that is why
the gallery is important, because art is LIKE the real life but does not belong
to the real life, just like the video games, or games in general. That's what I
try to do through the gallery, detach it from the real life and make the viewer
look at it differently.
RN: so I was wrong when I said earlier that you are trying to
blur that boundary between art and everyday, you are in fact making it more
distinct?
EH: In fact, before you asked this question even I thought I
was bridging the gap between art and life but I have just realized that I am
not doing that, because on one level I am blurring that line, by using the
materials and techniques from the everyday/real life unlike canvas and paint,
which do not have an existence in real life outside of art, like a chair or fan
does, it is closer to real life and the gap is minimized or there is no gap,
but my interest is in transcending the object from the real life to make it
‘Art’, to make it something other than what it already is, something more, and
that increases the gap.
RN: so like the gallery as a space for the
transcendance to happen within, like the church perhaps, with its stained glass
windows. So once you are in a gallery you put on a particular pair of goggles
to look around.
EH: yea, the gallery helps play with people’s perception who
are there to look at ‘Art’. Just like games that I mentioned earlier apply the
same rules but are not the real life. For example, I drove here is real life
but if we were to make a bet and say lets see who gets here first, it's a game
then, and transcends from the real life, leaves the real life and becomes
something else conceptually.
RN: Do you think your work is culturally or
geographically specific in any way?
EH: visually it can be culturally and
geographically specific because I rely on the aesthetics around me and because
I work with readymade objects its mostly what is available around me. But
conceptually it has nothing to do with religion, region or place, its very
basic universal urge of humans to think about and define what they are. So its
very universal in that sense.
RN: but some objects are inscribed with more meaning than
others, do you then consciously find objects that are more universal in their
meaning?
EH: for example if I take a stool, I’m not
interested in the meaning that the stool’s context brings, a stool is furniture
and if I have used chairs, they don’t have a political/religious or cultural
meaning, it symbolizes furniture. The metaphor is in their arrangement, for
example in ‘zero point’ the two fans refer to two humans. I work on different
levels, my work is very political because human beings are very political but I
don’t use direct symbols and also its not political in the sense of foreign
affairs but in the context of societies.
RN: what do you enjoy most about your
practice? what has been your favourite body of work?
EH: A very dear friend says; art making is
like making love, it has to be the best every time, you can’t compare it.
RN: Any artists or art works that you feel
are closely aligned to your practice?
EH: I like different things about different
artists not any particular artist. I like the quality of shock in Damien
Hirst’s work, I like the thought process of Bruce Nauman’s work, I like the
material use of Joseph Beuys’s work, I like Ai Wei Wei’s approach and
simplicity of materials.
RN: And lastly, lets talk about your upcoming
residency at Rijksakademie?
Why Rijks? When is it starting? How long is it? What are your plans? Did you
have to submit a proposal?
EH: I haven’t done this in a long time because I find
proposing projects and writing applications very painful. And I’ve been
thinking of doing my masters, and again that involves a lot of effort and I’m a
very lazy person by nature, And so I got very frustrated and I just want to
make work and get exposure in a place which is more developed in terms of both art
and society, so I just applied to whatever was in front of me, and I got
selected for two out of three that I applied to, one in Switzerland and the
other being Rijks. Both were starting next year, and there is no particular
reason for why I chose Rijks over the other one. But after I went there for the
interview, I realize that choosing Rijks was a good decision. The Rijksakademie is in Netherlands and is an
old building that used to have army barracks and horse stables at one
point. Big studios. Wood, ceramic, metal workshops and well equipped photo
studios, sound and video recording rooms, painting studios, big halls, a big
library, a data bank of video works and artists interviews, a Rijks museum. The structure of the residency is very loose
and sort of a combination of an artist residency and an MA program, you can
chose an advisor from a panel of artists, philosophers, writers, film makers,
from Amsterdam and outside, some very prominent names are in the list, no
pressure of doing assignments, no deadlines, its like independent research.
RN: so did you have to submit a proposal when you
applied?
EH: No I didn’t have to which is why I applied. They
just needed work and samples and my reasons for applying and I told them that I
just want exposure, make work in a different environment/setting, go to museums
and see art that otherwise I have only seen in books or on the internet.
RN: so have you already started thinking about what
kind of work you would make there?
EH: No I don’t have much idea, I may just start with
a few things similar to what I was doing here and then see what happens.
RN: And it's a two years long residency? And you get
a stipend to make work and sustain yourself?
EH: Yea, you have to extend/renew it after a year,
lets see how it goes, - the stipend is very little, I may have to pitch in from
my own pocket – I don’t know if I can work there or not, or get some funding,
because my wife and daughter are also accompanying me.
RN: Since your wife (Iqra Tanveer) is also an artist,
how does that inform your work?
EH: It has affected our practices in a very good way.
We have very different practices but somehow they meet at very interesting
intersections or sometimes the starting and the ending point is the same but
the process is very different, like two different roads leading to the same
place.
RN: and you both work with abstract/non-physical
ideas.
EH: but I have a very rational/logical approach where
as Iqra has a very abstract/intangible approach towards it. We are sort of
opposites in our methods and solutions.
RN: Ehsan, thank you very much for the coffee and
for taking out the time and I wish you the best of luck for the residency -
hope you make the most of your time there and will look forward to seeing more
exciting works from you in the future.
