The Serpentine gallery is currently hosting an exhibition about Indian contemporary art, Indian Highway. Here is the theme:
Painting of M. F. Husain outside the Serpentine.
“Some of the artworks in the exhibition have been selected for their connection to the theme of Indian Highway, reflecting the importance of the road in migration and movement and as the link between rural and urban communities. Other works make reference to technology and the ‘information superhighway’, which has been central to India’s economic boom. A common thread throughout is the way in which these artists demonstrate an active political and social engagement, examining complex issues in contemporary India that include environmentalism, religious sectarianism, globalisation, gender, sexuality and class.”
And here are some blogs about the exhibition:
- http://stillred.com/2008/12/adrian-searle-on-the-serpentine-gallerys-indian-highway/comment-page-1/
I don’t understand some of the discussions. First of all, why should an artist necessary reflect the artistic, political or economical situation of his country? We are in a global age and it is more and more awkward to classify an artist by his geography. Is it because I live in London that I should share the concerns of other artists living in London? Secondly, an exhibition is not a documentary. There is not such things as a good or bad representation of art from a region. It is only about selecting pieces of art for display. Who has the authority to say they represent a country of 1 billion people? Not the Serpentine nor the critics. This leads to merely debates of taste. Anyway, here are my comments on the artworks and how they were exhibited, NOT what Indian contemporary art should be.
Many curators, from UK and India, collaborated on this exhibition. The approach is free of formal conventions: wall paintings are extending the paintings on canvases, reproductions of paintings are exposed outdoor, variety of media are used. I don’t know if this is because of an ‘Indian way ‘ to exhibit, it is probably only the Serpentine way.
I would like to concentrate on the videos. The Raqs Media Collective asked documentaries to revisit videos they made over the last two decades, “revisit these images and produce a landscape that provides a unique vantage point from which to think through the present conditions of turbulent anxiety, visceral conflict and unprecedented opportunity.” They commissioned Hirsch and Müller to build the space. The result is quite interesting, not because of their shiny ladders representing ‘states of being between things’, it is a little bit cliché… But because of the way they put the videos at different height and angles in a very small space. You tend to look at multiple videos at the same time, discovering new ones on your way, and being immersed by them.
Ghost/Transmemoir from Bose Krishnamachari also offers to the public an interesting way to relate with videos. You enter a room with tens of suspended cans, used by the city’s dabbawalla lunch delivery system (pem). In each of those cans are small video screens. The installation is noisy as you hear the comments made by citizens of Mumbai in each can. On some of them are headphones you can use to concentrate on one sound at a time. The installation gives a sense of Mumbai’s effervescence.
I also saw a video which is on a highway next to Kashmir. It is looking at the window of a car with sounds from the radio in the background. Each time a soldier appears, the video breaks for few seconds. I liked the effect because it feels like an ideal situation of comfort broken by disruptive glances of something wrong. But I cannot tell you who did the video, because I could not get the information back. I wanted to get a short description of the artworks that were displayed, so that I could remember the names of the artists and artworks. I purchased the little Serpentine Highway book called ‘Indian highway’. I couldn’t find back in the book nor the Serpentine website the titles of everything I remembered, because the pictures were not of what I saw and the descriptions not what I read. A little more effort to promote the artworks and artists online and on paper would be sensible.
I don’t know about Indian art but I enjoyed some of the videos displayed at the Serpentine, related to daily lives, politically charged. Indian Highway is held at the Serpentine gallery until the 22nd February 2009.
Does it make any sense to attempt making a ‘snapshot’ of what India’s contemporary art is? Feel free to comment!
