This isn’t What it Looks Like

An exhibition of contemporary art from Pakistan redefines the idea of national art, and of the political versus the private.

It is four shows old and with each exhibition Lekha and Anupam Poddar’s Devi Art Foundation (DAF), India’s first private museum of contemporary art from the Subcontinent, sets the bar higher. Their latest, Resemble Reassemble, a show of contemporary art from Pakistan curated by Lahorebased artist Rashid Rana, has wowed audiences both in terms of work on display and its curatorial intervention.

You could draw a parallel between an earlier exhibition at DAF, Where in the World (Dec 2008), curated by the faculty and students of School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU, and this one. Both look at contemporary art practice within the context of globalisation, where the artists are grappling with new audiences and altered modes of production and distribution.

Rana, one of the bestknown contemporary artists in Pakistan, confesses to having taught at least half the artists he has presented. Visually, it is interesting how the idea of a national exhibition is treated. Instead of a grand master narrative, one is confronted with small passages where individual works appear and become part of a relay of conversation. A generation with its overlaps in imagery, content and materials begins to emerge. The exhibition, as the title suggests, seeks playful ‘resemblance’ and in making these linkages ‘reassembles’ individual works, the idea of national art and the idea of the political versus the private.

The exhibition begins with textbased works of Ayaz Jokhio and Saijjad Ahmed that play with the relationship between word and image, at the same time pointing to the limits of language. In No One Will Understand Me, Jokhio scribbles at the back of a photograph, turning the back of the image inscribed with words into the image. At one level, these works are in conversation with discussions in the art world since the conceptual and pop art movements of the late 1960s. But with their strategic placement next to Mahbub Shah’s series of official and popular images of Jinnah and Bani Abidi’s twochannel video of the artist enacting news readers on Indian and Pakistani TV, they also emphasise the limitations of word and text in trying to address the overdetermined discourse on Pakistan and its relation to India.

The exhibition absolves itself of any such project and like Unum Babar’s videos projected on eggshells of the artist wearing and removing her veil, turns its attention to art as a constantly mutating object, both fragile and complex.  The section ends with Huria Khan’s beautiful video work of the words on a letter dissolving into water. And we begin again with less prescribed notions on where art, leave aside art from Pakistan, should take us.

(Resemble Reassemble is on view at Devi Art Foundation until 10 May 2010 Vidya Shivdas is curator at Vadehra Art Gallery.)

artcontemporary artPakistan