'NEW ART from SOUTH ASIA': Saturday 6 October, MODERN ART, OXFORD

Tuesday, 9 October 2007

Saturday 6 October, MODERN ART, OXFORD

I meet artist IMRAN QURESHI, who is exhibiting four contemporary MINIATURES from his on-going a series entitled 'MODERATE ENLIGHTENMENT', and who is in conversation with Art Historian Virginia Whiles.

After hearing about the project, Imran offers to recommend a few artists for the exhibition.
I enquire about the possibility of visiting the National College of Art where he teaches, in Lahore.
It looks as if a visit to Lahore is on the cards...

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Reflections about South Asian Art

REFLECTIONS ABOUT CONTEMPORARY ART FROM SOUTH ASIA

Like Chinese Art, Contemporary Art from SOUTH ASIA is becoming ‘flavour of the month’ among Western curators and gallerists in search of new cultural commodities for the hungry international Art Market.
This marketability and comodification of Contemporary South Asian Art is reflected not solely in high prices fetched by some artist works at auctions, but also in the fact that an increasing number of artists are now in a position to make a living from their art.
In India, besides the wealthy urban centres of Dehli and Mumbai, this is evident in KERALA, among other states, where artist colonies are developing: with artists who have returned from Dehli, Mumbai and other cities where 'important' galleries are concentrated.
Kashi Art Gallery, who will be celebrating its tenth anniversary programme in December 2007, has played an important part in this shift, offering support to artists in the form of exhibitions, residencies and sales.
This professionalization of art is a positive sign, especially when anchored at local level.

It could, however, also become a curse if pressure to ‘make it’ with the 'big' galleries, biennales, and auction houses, pressurized artists to relinquish their own artistic, social and political agendas in favor of commercial ones.

The aim of this exhibition is to present the work of emerging artists—artists not yet subjected to the pressures of the international art market—and give them A FIRST OPPORTUITY TO SHOW THEIR WORK INTERNATIONALLY; without having to pander to international taste and fashions; by just being themselves.

In order to locate these works I plan to travel throughout INDIA and PAKISTAN to meet artists, teachers and gallerists.

The works I am looking for will show a CREATIVE EXPLORATION OF MEDIA AND ISSUES, and display a QUALITY OF THOUGHT not impaired by a concern to produce seductive commodities for the art market.
This, however, does not preclude the work being pleasurable and seductive in its materiality as well as conceptually stimulating.

The work selected for exhibition will be available for sale: to ordinary people not to millionaires. In this way, it will bring together artists and public before speculation drives them apart.

Having assimilated and transformed Indian and European artistic and cultural traditions, Contemporary Artists working in India and South Asia, have to face the additional challenge of defining their identity as CITIZENS and as ARTISTS in a multi-cultural contexts fraught with conflicts of interests. Conflicts anchored in differences of religion, culture, castes and class offer a greater challenge than those faced by Western artists who have to negotiate their own identities on the monocultural ground of Western capitalist consumer society.
One challenge for young Asian artists, which adds interest to their work, is the opportunity left to define themselves as artists, without relinquishing their respective HISTORIES and ‘local’/specific cultural TRADITIONS in the moment of RE-INVENTING THE MODERN according to their needs and circumstances.

What I hope this exhibition will make clear are the strong links which remains between TRADITION and MODERNITY, AESTHETICS and ETHICS, and highlight the tensions between aspirations to globalization and the more or less explicit or implicit critiques and reservations towards it; a reserve based on respect for local traditions and humanistic values.

It is a measure of our ignorance and long-standing prejudices that in the West we perceive the cultural specificity of Indian Art and Culture as ‘exotic’ rather than as an expression of contemporaneity: as cultural diversity (on the periphery) rather than as part of global modernity, on a par with Britishness, Dutchness, Frenchness, Europeanness, Americanness, etc.
The exhibition will present India as an intrinsic part of ‘our’ world cultural heritage—wherever we live—based on a different specificity from that of Europe and America; not anchored in the past but caught in an evolving present.

Since the Nineteenth century, when Varma adopted the medium of oil painting and the Western conventions of Salon painting—which he hybridized with his own cultural tradition—the History of Modern Indian Art, has seen a number of phases; when artists have taken inspiration from, emulated and assimilated elements from the Modernists traditions of Europe; albeit with different emphases.

These borrowing enabled artists to open up the visual language which had been available to artists during previous centuries, when Art was at the service of the State, Religion and the ruling castes. What strikes me, today, is the capacity of Indian artists to avoid a slavish imitation of the West, and their confidence in combining Western Modernism with Indian elements in a productive dialogue; developing a new form of inter-culturalism which remains to be acknowledged by the History of Art, and points the way forward. For in spite of an increasing presence on the international Art Market, and given the Euro and Western bias from which the History of Art is written, contemporary Indian Art remains on the periphery of written Art History; more like a 'dialect' or a regional or exotic form of Artistic Discourse rather than as an equal partner in steering the course of World Art and Art History.
One aim of this exhibition is to challenge these assumptions and to provide an open ground to redefine the Contemporary on expanded cultural grounds, whilst highlighting the contribution of Art to understanding our place in a world of cultural diversity, in the wake of globalization.

At a time when aggressive forms of Western consumerism promote Global cultural values against local/regional ones—a high price to pay for individual freedom and modernization—the arts become a site where conflict of values and identities arising from the impact of GLOBALIZATION can be enacted and fought. Alongside artists trained in art schools, I plan to include other artistic voices—tribal voices—which are presently marginalized (in social, political, cultural and economic respects), but who can make a significant contribution to the identity of multi-cultural India, if given the respect and the rights they deserves.

However serious or tragic the subject-matter of the works, pleasure —the ‘Pleasure of the Text’, according to Barthes; arising from the form and materiality of the works—is an intrinsic part of the experience of engaging with art; whether as artist or as viewers.

Trusting that there are enough galleries and exhibition spaces to display established Asia artists, I have decided not to follow existing curatorial paths and not to adopt the ready-made agendas of curators and galleries in India, Pakistan and elsewhere [including galleries showing South Asia Art in the UK, Europe and America].

This does not mean that I dismiss their approach, nor that I wish to by-pass the current debates in art theory and art criticism; quite the opposite. My choice simply expresses the wish to explore parallel avenues and test hypotheses on the basis of my experience, research, personal reflexions and encounters, in DIALOGUE with artists...

GM Coventry 25.09.07

'NEW ART from SOUTH ASIA'

Tuesday, 9 October 2007

Saturday 6 October, MODERN ART, OXFORD

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Reflections about South Asian Art