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january4 review Drawing the difference
Superlative
art We
made
The greatest danger we face As the first anniversary of the murder of Salmaan Taseer approaches, the cause of anxiety is the realisation that knives are already out for anyone who dares to warn the community of the suicidal course it has taken By I. A. Rehman Fifty-three Pakistanis
held in Indian prisons do not want to be repatriated to Pakistan. Instead,
they want to be given asylum in India. Have our smart intelligence men
informed Islamabad of this case and the reasons for the prisoners’
strange-looking request? They could not have missed the following report
carried by the Times of India on December 3, 2011: “For years, the Supreme Court has egged on the
centre to expedite the deportation of hundreds of Pakistani prisoners
languishing in Indian jails even after completion of their terms. But on
Friday, it was pleasantly surprised to learn that many did not want to go
back”. In a detailed report to the Supreme Court on the
status of Pakistani prisoners in Indian jails, the external affairs
ministry was said to have declared that 53 of such prisoners had
challenged their deportation orders in the Delhi high court. They were
demanding political asylum and wanted to be treated as refugees. These 53
Pakistanis, including women and children, had said that as they belonged
to a minority sect, the Mehdis, they were seeking asylum in India or any
country other than Pakistan. And, of course, the government and the people of
Pakistan have heard about the scores of Hazara young men from It is possible for a typical bureaucrat to dismiss
with contempt the case of a Pakistani who abandons his Pakistani identity
and also commits the crime of illegally migrating to a foreign country.
But a human rights activist cannot do that because no responsible state
forsakes its citizens even when are found guilty of an offence in a
foreign land. More than that, it is impossible to close such cases without
trying to ascertain the causes of the Balochistan Hazaras’ desperation.
Do these incidents have any relevance to the brutal
assassination of Salmaan Taseer, governor of the largest and the strongest
province of the Islamic Republic? Most certainly, yes. All those who are
seeking asylum in India and who perished at sea as well as Salman Taseer
have been victims of the wave of intolerance that has been sweeping
Pakistan throughout the decades of independence and has been getting
stronger and stronger over the past thirty years or so. Life was always difficult for Pakistan’s religious
minorities but they were not subjected to organised persecution during the
first few years of freedom. The state was also able to withstand the
challenge of the theocratic forces to the rights of the minorities till
the imposition of martial law in 1958. Things changed considerably during
the long years of the Ayub dictatorship. Although the regime pretended to
be non-theocratic and some of its apologists considered it secular, the
suppression of democratic politics and political parties resulted in
making religious groups masters of the public space. By 1970, when the
country’s first general election was held, they considered themselves
strong enough to bid for power through the electoral process. They did not
succeed but they were able to frighten the West Pakistan’s rising
political party into conceding them privileges they did not deserve nor
were they sanctioned by democratic principles. The country’s slide into a theocratic state in the
1970s has been thoroughly documented — the adoption of Islam as the
state religion in 1973, the declaration of Ahmadis as non-Muslims in 1974,
Ziaul Haq’s so called Islamisation measures in 1979, and the rise of a
new theory of holy war from 1979 onward. All these happenings resulted in
progressive increase in discrimination against religious minorities
through the state instruments, institutions and policies. The 1980s marked the arrival of non-state actors as
perpetrators of excesses against non-Muslim citizens. Two factors
contributed to the aggravation of minorities’ plight. First, the
adoption of the blasphemy law and its interpretation not only by
illiterate zealots and police constables but also by educated
professionals and judges to the effect that every Muslim had a duty to
kill anyone suspected of blasphemy. Secondly, the militants’ adoption of
systematic violence against the minority communities and sects as part of
their campaign to capture power and establish a narrow-based sectarian
theocracy has almost paralysed the state and society both.
As the first anniversary of the murder of Salmaan
Taseer approaches, one’s mind is filled with forebodings about the
future of the Pakistani people. The cause of anxiety is not merely the
possibility that many more Pakistanis will seek asylum abroad or safety in
the bottom of the sea but also the realisation that knives are already out
for anyone who dares to warn the community of the suicidal course it has
taken. The greatest danger Pakistan faces stems from the
misunderstanding that religious intolerance is a problem for the
minorities only and that they alone will be the victims, while the worst
victims will be the members of the majority community, for they will have
lost all sense of right and wrong and forfeited their claim to be rational
human beings. This will of course be a transient phase in the thousands of
years of long history of our people, as all human aberrations are, but one
shudders at the thought of the colossal loss the innocent lambs will have
to pay till the tide eventually turns.
‘Amrica Chalo’, the latest production of Ajoka
staged at Lahore’s Alhamra was based on the most topical issue which has
seized the ire of the vocal section of the country. It was expressed in
exaggerated terms because the nation finds itself torn between total
dependence on the United States and the wish to be independent in
exercising its policies. This dependence which causes so much sound and
fury because it signifies nothing is reduced to a mere flapping of the
wings. The productions of Ajoka in the past couple of years
have swung from characters/figures that have historical significance to
subjects that are topical. In the plays which are of historical nature,
the attempt has been to reinterpret history, put a grid of understanding
and bring out a facet not openly recognised or publicly acknowledged,
usually against the current spin of common acceptance or the engineered
reading of the past. The other issues which are topical like that of the
scarf or full face veil as in ‘Burqavaganza’, and now this obsession
with the Americans, have been dealt with in greater humour. This
light-hearted approach always creates space for ambivalence and that can
be seen as containing more dramatic virtues. ‘Amrica Chalo’, written and directed by Shahid
Mehmood Nadeem, was the satirical comment on our ambivalent relationship
with the most powerful country in the world, the United States. The two
faces of America, its hard power in its military forces and its soft power
in the shape of its intellectual advancement comes into a collision course
with full force. The imperialistic policies of the only super power is
more than neutralised by the power of its institutions, and people in
countries like Pakistan appear to be totally caught on the wrong foot. The
air is taken out of the bag of anti-Americanism by their intense desire to
either earn a few dollars or to see their children educated in American
institutions. The action of the play is located in the visa section
of the embassy, where about eight people have lined up for the hearing of
the fate of their visas applications. These eight in a way represent the
mainstream of our society— the politicians, the maulana, the
businessman, the artist, the student, the parents of a son who is an
American national and a young man who just wants to leave this country for
greener pastures, seeking work in any unskilled or semi-skilled category.
As if these were not fully representative of the society, two terrorists
totting their guns also barged in, spraying bullets, wanting to get visas
for themselves and their group leader. The play was about the embarrassment and humiliation
that these people had to go through in the process of getting the visa.
They grovelled, lied, posed, postured and supplicated in the process of
being inquired and interrogated. There was plenty to laugh about in the
discrepancy of what was posed and stated and what actually happened,
reflective of the truer state of affairs. More in the nature of slapstick, primarily humour was
evoked through language but there were moments when humour was generated
through antics — and that was of a higher quality. Like in most satires,
though not all, humour is created by exaggeration, by caricature of the
character and by making the situations bizarre, almost taken to the
extreme of incredulity. It was like many of the other Ajoka productions, a
song and dance affair interwoven into the action of the play. Probably to
keep the tempers down, and to treat otherwise a very serious situation,
the comic vein of the songs and dances were pleasant interludes to sustain
the light-hearted manner of the production. Also that the production in
terms of physical appearance was colourful — the costumes, the props,
the set were all doused in bright colours so as to dispel any moroseness
in the treatment of the theme which in some other Ajoka productions had
been rendered in darker colours. The ambivalence has greater material for dramatic
rendering and can be the subject of satire — and so it was in the play.
Perhaps such plays, where the message is not that pointed, make for better
theatre due to the ambiguity involved. Since the play moved at two levels,
the standard against which the satire was based and its deviance from it,
the hazing over of the very focussed fed into greater dramatic potential. One encouraging aspect was that one saw many new faces
in the production, probably some making a debut on stage or in any kind of
performance. Of the people who have been with Ajoka over a period of time,
Naseem Abbas and M. Aslam were in the production; the rest appeared to be
a newer set. It always augurs well for a group if there is a circulation
of talent — the old should gradually make way for the younger talent.
Since theatre in Pakistan is not considered a profession, many in search
of a steady profession quit; making it a part-time thing in the beginning
but the pressures of being breadwinners for men and raising kids for the
women gradually eases them out of this activity. It is good that a steady
stream of young talent is introduced, if nothing else for the acquaintance
with the basics of theatre. Furqan Majeed as Raymond was entertaining as
was Ahmer Khan as the opportunistic all-weather Moulvi Tameezuddin.
Be it the cellular companies with international
ownership or branded garments, a person using these products in Pakistan
is not even aware that he is part of a global world where differences are
diminishing fast because of the monopoly of multinationals. Ditto for
language, music, food, fashion, entertainment and politics. What is easy
to notice though is that, in this world with blending borders, the
direction of flow of goods is determined by the powerful nations. The
‘developed’ world exports its products to other regions where these
become a craze through the increased
hype created by the media and other instruments that shape public opinion. Ironically, the individual who purchases these goods
often neglects that it was manufactured right under his nose or in a
neighbouring country. He is ready to pay exorbitant amounts not just for
the excellent quality and design but because it represents the developed,
modern, sophisticated West. The other sordid side is that certain powers (not
necessarily states but corporate entities too) use the labour and
resources from ‘developing’ countries in order to maximize their
profits and maintain supremacy in the domain of commerce, wealth and
technology. By outsourcing their products to the same societies where
these are launched later, these powers exploit the lesser developed part
of humanity. Once this cycle of manufacturing objects and their
circulation and consumption is complete, other ideas start flowing in.
Because of the ‘supremacy’ of certain powers in trading goods, their
concepts about other aspects of life are considered great examples to
follow. The Western achievements in art and culture — like literature,
music, dance, theatre, film and visual arts — are believed and
propagated to be profound works. These then set the yardstick for each
genre and the Western forms are often adapted, mimed and copied by other
cultures. Due to our admiration for the European painting and
their system of art education, the classical and modern art of the West is
emulated here. An art student is familiar with important works of art and
believes them to be samples of ‘true’ art (even though some of those
concepts are now being questioned and understood as obsolete). One of
these universal truths about Western art was examined by Hasnat Mehmood in
his recent solo exhibition ‘Buy One, Get One’
held from Dec 19-29, 2011, at Rohtas 2, Lahore. Mehmood showed a total of 15 works on paper in
graphite pencil. Except two text-based pieces, all drawings are reproduced
from recognisable art works, both from European art history and our
heritage. Copies are made of ‘King Priest’ of Mohenjo-Daro, the seal
of Indus Valley Civilization and Indian miniature paintings from different
schools and styles. Along with these, works such as
’Creation of Adam’ by Michelangelo, Impressionists’ canvases
and ‘Marilyn Diptych’
by Andy Warhol are redrawn in pencils. On a cursory view, there is nothing unusual in these
imitations, since students normally recreate works of past as part of
their coursework in art schools. But Mehmood’s works have two
distinguishing qualities. All of them were made in swirling lines which,
according to the artist, is another interpretation/extension of the Pardakht
technique, conventionally used to develop shades in the miniature
painting. The other, most important, element was the small inscriptions
underneath each image, executed in the same method. Beneath the visuals of
Michelangelo, French paintings and American canvases, texts such as
‘Made in India’, ‘Made in Pakistan’, ‘Made in Vietnam’,
‘Made in Sri Lanka’ etc. were drawn. Extending these notions of displacements, miniature
paintings and other works from our past were labelled with ‘Courtesy of
Metropolitan Museum of Art’ and ‘Courtesy of Victoria & Albert
Museum’. The juxtaposition of image with the label transcribed
the way the cultural constructs, once linked with a specific place, are
now re-situated in the wide international market — of ideas and
commerce. It shows how the artworks from Europe have become local standard
of aesthetics and are hence owned by the locals here, as much the
artifacts of our artistic past are in the possession of the West. In that
sense, his work serves as a critique about art turning into a market
commodity — within a culture and outside. Interestingly, the course Hasnat Mehmood has commented
upon was present in his work too. Majority of works were of a size that
reminded of posters of these images sold on the streets of our cities.
Likewise, the act of redrawing these works from other times and
civilizations was an act of domesticating the other’s art, but from a
different position. With his background as a trained miniature painter
from NCA, this could be seen as making the West exotic, instead of
reverting to the conventional scheme of projecting the indigenous culture
as exotic. One is forced to classify him as miniature artist by
virtue of his education but, in reality, he is among the very few artists
(along with Muhammad Zeeshan) who are intelligently extending the
aesthetics of miniature, rather than being content on cosmetic changes,
such as spreading typical miniature imagery on an installation or on the
pages of a book. It does not matter if Hasnat Mehmood’s work is
pictorially resolved or not or if it is aesthetically attractive because
it has invited issues beyond art, aesthetics and the personal fiefdom or
cage called style.
Superlative
art The Singapore Art Museum recently hosted a mega art
event that constituted the showing of preeminent contemporary art from 24
countries across the Asia Pacific region. The Asia Pacific Breweries (APB)
Foundation sponsors the Signature Art Prize which has gained status over
the years and become a prestigious and coveted award. It is awarded on a
triennial timeline and is the result of a 15-year partnership between
Singapore Art Museum (SAM) and APB Foundation. Their goal, unlike art
fairs in Asia, is to develop and promote contemporary visual art in the
region not by tapping the buyer’s market or through marketing strategies
but through the search for, and examination of, superlative art being
produced in the Asia- Oceania regions. In 2011 as many as 130 artworks were nominated from 24
countries and territories across the region of which 15 were selected as
the finalists and displayed at the Singapore Art Museum. From each
country, a prominent art critic, educator or writer was selected as
nominator who was responsible for choosing three or four of his/her
country’s best artworks. From Pakistan, the nominator was Salima Hashmi
who selected works by Rashid Rana, Faiza Butt, Adeela Suleman, Imran
Qureshi and Noor Ali Chagani. It was Imran Qureshi’s spectacular
large-scale miniature “You who are my love and my life’s enemy too”
that made it to the roster of the 15 best. The jury panel consisted of
five eminent scholars, curators and writers: Fumio Nanjo, Director Mori
Art Museum, Gregor Muir, Executive Director Institute of Contemporary
Arts, London, Hendro Wijanto leading Southeast Asian writer, critic and
curator, Ranjit Hoskote, poet-writer, critic and curator and Tan Boon Hui,
Director SAM. The jury’s herculean task was to select exceptional
artworks from amongst the nominations; in essence to extract the
quintessence of all that is provocative, engaging and energetic from the
immeasurable mass of production — some of it just visual static — that
may be found in a continent equally immeasurable in its creative spirit,
both historically and in the present milieu. But interestingly, the
judging criterion was based on the particular artwork represented, not
taking into account the artist’s past work or experience. This criterion
provided immediacy to the Asian art scene but it also validated the
superiority of the artists. It is highly unlikely that a mediocre artist
producing a single tour de force could have made it through the stringent
selection process. The artwork that won the first prize was a gargantuan
painting by Rodel Tapaya of Philippines — a mammoth mural on canvas
titled “Baston ni Kabunian, Bilang Pero di Mabilang (Cane of Kabunian,
numbered but cannot be counted)”. The work issues from Tagalog mythology
and the mural with its allegorical meta narratives transcends the temporal
ambit of linearity and recounts many centuries worth of storytelling,
encompassing humanity’s deepest concerns. The giant dog/ wolf at the
centre of the work denotes the animal that was alleged to have saved
humanity from a devastating flood. On the dog’s back sits another
mythological character, the son of the god Kabunian, who used cloth to
form mountains and bring fire and warmth to humans. The frog signifies the
story of a man turned into a toad as a result of his insatiable greed.
Though the imagery is rich and captivating, the work is a profoundly
ontological study and speaks of human behaviour, power, greed and
destruction. The winning artwork caught audiences by surprise
because in spite of the systematic assemblage of imagery set out in an
elaborate arrangement, the painting remained within the boundaries of
conventional formalism. But we must remind ourselves that eventually there
is nothing outmoded about formalism and that its implications are as valid
as any form of new media that we may want to promote for expediency or to
indicate modernity. Of the three jurors’s prizes, one went to Indian
artist Sheba Chhachhi, whose colossal installation The Water Diviner is
overwhelming in its multiplicity and diversity both in terms of objects
and ideological inferences. On top of tons of books stacked chaotically
along the sides of the room, are situated seven light boxes, constructed
to replicate large books; a literal recreation of the ‘illuminated
manuscript’ on which are shown traditional miniature paintings as if in
their original terrain. In the centre of the room runs a light box
identifying the waterways of Shahjehanabad, the ancient name for old Delhi
and the city’s symbolic heart. The pivotal element of the installation
is the huge screen that illustrates a series of images of an elephant
swimming underwater. At the heart of the work lies Chhachhi’s concern
with the value of water as a natural resource, with the elephant and water
representing anthropomorphic elements. The other prize went to a 5:23 minute video
installation by Daniel Crooks of Australia titled Static No. 12 (seek
stillness in movement). It shows an elderly man deeply immersed in his tai
chi routine oblivious to the world around him. With the help of motion
blurring, a visual refraction occurs that defragments the image and the
eventual loss of form tells of the artist’s metaphysical insight into
the effect of time on the body and intellect. The third winner of the Jury Award went to Ash Color
Mountains by Aida Makoto of Japan. Outwardly the serene, hazy mountains
are replications of Sansuiga, or traditional Japanese mountain paintings.
But zoom into the painting and a whole new aspect presents itself.
Millions of corpses are entangled together in a mound interspersed
quixotically with office equipment and furniture. They are all faceless
men attired in business suits. The work refers to the post-war re-building
of Japan into a global super power at the cost of millions of
office-workers who put in long hours and contributed significantly towards
the economic success of the country at the cost of personal leisure or
fulfillment. The People’s Choice award went to Singaporean artist
Michael Lee’s series of eight digital prints on archival paper which are
diagrammatic drawings of fantastical structures, some almost organic in
their progression — in the manner of Russian architects Alexander
Brodsky and Ilya Utkin, to whom Lee has attributed one of the pieces. Lee
links the conceptual framework of each building to the ideology of a
well-known individual — Italo Calvino, David Attenborough, M. Night
Shyamalan, even Al Gore. Besides the winners, the other nominated finalists
were deeply engaging works and spoke of several similar trajectories of
Asian history like colonization or political repression. New Zealander Greg Semu’s photographs of a tableau titled
The Last Cannibal Supper recreates da Vinci’s iconic painting with Semu
resplendent in tribal body
tattoo, playing the central
role of Christ and with the disciples ‘enacted’ by indigenous Kanak
tribe members. It is a tongue in cheek commentary on colonization that
brought Christianity to the Pacific islands. In spite of its size, Singapore is a powerhouse that
has given impetus to visual art from across Asia, playing a vital role in
the development and investigation of contemporary art, embracing all
regions and peoples from this vast continent. So 2012 is here. A year which seems to have taken on
the ominous significance that 1984 enjoyed half a century ago. 1984,
because of the George Orwell novel depicting a totalitarian society, and
2012, because the idea that the ancient Mayan calendar mysteriously stops
at this point, indicating perhaps the end of the world. Apparently, the calendar ends a 5126-year cycle on
December 21, 2012, so people interested in matters eschatological are
intrigued by whether this means the destruction of the world and the end
of days... We do all love the idea of ominous prophecies and doomsday
scenarios, after all the prophecies of Nostradamus (whoever he might have
been) have been helping to sell books and associated retail items for
years and years. The Mayan calendar
is the favoured doomsday prediction these days. But now researchers
have suggested this apocalyptic interpretation is misguided and the
December date is merely the end of one of the phases in which the calendar
is divided. “There is no prophecy for 2012. It is a marketing
fallacy,” Erik Velasquez, etchings specialist at the National Autonomous
University of Mexico, told Reuters recently, thereby rather putting a
dampener on the excitement of the eschatologically-minded. Why are we so fascinated with doomsday prophecies?
This is mainly because of our fear of the unknown and our inability to
understand what exactly death is, but also to a large extent because it is
so difficult to imagine that human civilisation can be totally destroyed. Human civilisation is pretty awesome: that the human
intellect has been able to study and formulate matters about the natural
world is amazing. Through observation we have formulated chemistry,
physics and biology etc and science has taken us to amazing levels of
discovery about our species and ourselves — the human genome and DNA
testing to mention perhaps the most dramatic.
We have developed technology to a level which seemed impossible to
most of us half a century ago, even though we had already foretold it in
literature and film. When I Skype in London with somebody in Karachi on my
iPhone I am overawed by how common this has become yet how stunning it is
that it can actually happen. This is Star Trek— in our lives, here and
now. When we watched the iconic TV show decades ago, it seemed fantastical
and impossible, yet now we carry the technology around with us in our
pocket. We have seen the future, and we have made it happen. I
salute the human intellect, its spirit of observation and creation, of
making the impossible possible, of innovating and imagining. And that is the thought I start 2012 with. Happy New Year to you and yours, Best Wishes, Umber Khairi |
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Balochistan who drowned in the sea when their boat sank off the Indonesian
coast, a long distance short of their destination in Australia. An
official spokesman says none of those who perished in this incident has
been identified as a Pakistani. But anyone who wants to know the truth
will find out that the first thing the Hazaras wishing to escape to
Australia, via Thailand and Indonesia, do at the start of the last lap of
their hazardous journey is to destroy all documents identifying them as
Pakistanis. Those who do not land themselves in Thai or Indonesian prisons
believe they have better chances of getting asylum if they claim to be
Afghans.
Most
of these young men apparently do not belong to the poor class, considering
the fact that they pay something like Rs 600,000 to 900,000 as the fare
and fees to the gangs operating the immigration racket. Many of them could
have succeeded in finding good careers. But they risk their freedom and
life because they will surely lose both if they stay in Quetta.
Salmaan
Taseer’s murder a year ago, closely followed by the assassination of
Shahbaz Bhatti, federal minister for minorities, marked a watershed in
Pakistan’s history. Throughout the past 12 months a great deal of
evidence has become available to show that the state has lost the courage
to defend, beyond empty rhetoric, the rights of religious minorities. When
Salmaan Taseer’s assassin was sentenced to death, many in authority
wished the court had not followed the law. The government’s flabbiness
is matched fully by opposition parties that claim to be non-theocratic.
Even Mr Imran Khan, who claims to be the most courageous politician of
them all, does not want to take on the extremists because he fears that
would cost him votes. Ditto for all other institutions including the media
and the judiciary.
