[caption id="attachment_4764" align="alignnone" width="560" caption="SHAFIQ DAD, Redo Pakistan Poster, courtesy of Other Asias, Fatima Hussain."]
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Curated by Salima Hashmi, a well-respected and knowledgeable figure in the Pakistani art world, “Hanging Fire” (on view September 10, 2009 – January 3, 2010 at Asia Society) brings together the practice of artists living and working in Pakistan, with the exception of one or two who also work outside. Zahoor Ul Akhlaq, is the only representation of an earlier, formative period of art in the country after which the show moves through various contemporary art practices.
In the exhibition are works that may implicitly or blatantly deal with the politics and the projected mayhem of a nation but that alone is not what makes it significant. What makes it significant is that the current perceptions of truth or projected truth about what Pakistan represents to the rest of the world – its power, its politics, its economics, its strategies and alliances has far more bearing on what is expected of artistic practice and culture building in the nation. There was an overall sense of something positive that these individuals are engaging in. The fact that there is an engagement in the first place seemed paramount in the eyes of artists and curator alike. This stems out of the knowledge that most people wouldn’t necessarily think of culture building as a movement within Pakistan given the circumstances under which it functions as a society. Issues of censorship and artistic freedom are so volatile that it becomes more interesting both to Pakistanis as well as the rest of the world to see what shapes the role of the artist.
To understand that role I’ll turn to a blog piece titled Civic Conviction: An Artist’s Social Responsibility written by Nik Pence and Alyse Ronayne. Pence and Ronayne's discussion bring out two points that I find relevant in contextualizing the aesthetics and the content produced by those within the show and outside of it. The first is the question of whether art making itself is a radical action that can perpetuate the ideals of social responsibility. One might see a certain degree of “radical” within the work of Hamra Abbas, whose piece treads a thin line in reinterpreting religious and national symbols, and Huma Mulji’s work that juxtaposes the buffalo (symbolic of traditional values) and the pillar (symbolic of man-made power) presenting the dichotomy of Pakistan’s existence as a country that simultaneously struggles to live in the past and future. However it serves more as social commentary, risking the ire of the conservatives rather than initiating a restructuring of social and moral values within the systems of society.
On the other hand a group called Other Asias, had a project curated by Fatima Hussain called ‘Redo Pakistan’ which called for artists, writers, poets and thinkers from around the world to contribute a piece that presents their answers to this question as posited by the curator - What if Pakistan was to be restored, stabilized today by social envisioners? What would a Pakistan, reconstructed in 2009, the year after the unstable rule, look like? What if instead of the super powers renovating the third world nations, one country was left in the hands of social envisioners? How would they fantasize remodelling the land, geographically, politically, intellectually? The show ran in Lahore alongside another show, shut down by political activists. Under these circumstances the ‘visions’ were published as a newspaper and handed out discreetly to both visitors of the gallery space in Lahore as well as to the general public. The dynamics of Lahore is different from that of New York or Chicago or Los Angeles. The former remains to be conjoined with the “immediacy” in how information pertaining to a culture or society or nation, forms and develops. It in turn forms a relationship that is far more deep-seated in terms of a political and societal agenda among the artistic community – the ”culture builders” of Pakistani society.
[caption id="attachment_4766" align="alignnone" width="560" caption="Bani Abidi, Shan Pipe Band Learns The Star Spangled Banner (2004), courtesy of the artist and Green Cardamom."][/caption]
This brings us to the second point the bloggers make; that the “immediacy [of] information” impacts our understanding of the success of culture building. How the immediacy of a subject matter informs, mutates, grows, or alternatively remains stagnant seems key to Pakistani art. The most current and pervasive in Pakistan’s case starts with its history, one that’s always talked of as a “separation” and a constant struggle to find its “self.” It deals with how the tearing away from India has meant to the Pakistani identity, politics and relationship to the Western world and its neighbors. The nature of this information oscillates from fear and mistrust to the counter struggles attempting to build something positive through the politics of representation. In this context artistic practice tends to be judged on parameters that are based on how much it instigates social, moral and ethical change. The parameters are far too subjective and the expectations too high. It requires that, as a part of the engagement you have with the work, both the artist and viewer are trying to reconcile what is happening within the politics and relationship Pakistan has to the rest of the world, particularly America.
In this context it is also interesting to see how the vehicle of expression employed in the artists practice translates to an audience. Most artists are trained in the school of miniatures and like most other artists from the region termed South Asia, painting is a strong and old tradition. So is the narrative tradition. In essence, you have mediums that are still referring back to its strong historical roots. That wouldn’t pose a problem had it not been employed to create works with a tried and “been there done that” narrative style. For instance, Imran Qureshi’s pieces that rework miniatures (very skillfully, I must add), by incorporating contemporary icons or rendering it on alternate surfaces tagged as an installation seems rather obvious and dated. There remains a need to really move forward conceptually in an “Allan Kaprow did to Jackson Pollock” kind of way. And we do see some of this in projects such as “Redo Pakistan” but not enough elsewhere.
What would be more challenging is to see the use of new media that would present a binary transmission or creation of “information.” Bani Abidi’s video for ‘Hanging Fire’, Shan Pipe Band Learns The Star Spangled Banner is a good example of such ambiguity. Towards the end of the ‘Hanging Fire’ panel discussion a journalist complained about the lack of engagement - that artists weren’t dealing with enough current issues. One of the artist’s responded, “Well if we do your job what would you do? So leave us to do our job while you do yours.” Which in essence meant - you are a journalist and I am an artist and our roles differ. But does it? Obviously they were making two very different points but you get a sense that that aspect of social responsibility rather than commentary is what is expected of a country like Pakistan. So the question remains - Do we see artists within a volatile political and cultural flux as being a vehicle or voice of change and their works as automatically seeking to be radical thereby becoming the harbinger of social responsibility?
Huma Mulji, High Rise: Lake City Drive (2009), courtesy of the artist and Green Cardamom.
