what is it that am looking for

There was a rabbit at the door

No news paper on the floor

Marley sung no more

Being told that i snore

Blue whales are cast ashore

That desire to soar

I loved the tea that you pour

Or the shirts that i wore

But i must have done that before

Is sex is a decor

Or dreams are such a chore

That rabbit at the door

Did make me implore

What is it that am looking for

Notes on Neo liberalism and Indian Art

Debanjan Roy|INDIA SHINING I (GANDHI AND THE LAPTOP)| Edition of 5 | 2007 | Fiberglass with acrylic paint| 27 x 46 x 30 in.

·         It is common to argue that dichotomy and polarities are out of fashion.  Moreover, nation states have been proven to have been constructed and hence in many arenas they have ceased to exist. In such a situation if one seeks to revisit the ‘global’ ‘local’ dialogue using contemporary Indian art as a case study, then the positioning of the ‘local’ suddenly seems to be on fleeting grounds. With ‘localities now being trans geographic, it is increasingly becoming difficult to position the ‘local’ within the ‘global’-’local’ debate. On the other hand, the ‘global’ is well positioned. It is clearly trans-geographic, it claims for it self a cosmopolitan identity and by and large subscribes to a life style where differences in space, time, gender, caste, sexuality, race, tend to collapse. It is this collapsed (constructed) identity that casts itself in a postmodern universalism, which can increasingly be called neo-liberal.*

• ·         To understand this neo-liberal identity, one could pose the India Shining campaign sponsored by the first BJP led NDA government(1999-2004)  with the ‘India Poised’ campaign (2006-07) sponsored by neo-liberal image building forces within in corporate India. At the core of both the campaigns lie the claim of re-presenting India in a newly shaping (reconstructing) Asia within a world which is increasingly trying to re configure itself while still being in the ‘crisis’ of being an unipolar world. How these two campaigns represented the notion of 'India' and 'development' become crucial in understanding the links between contemporanity and neoliberalism in india. Both these campaigns heavily deployed, 'scale',  'shine',  global, and the urban as both campaign strategy and and symbols for desire and progress. Though these campaingns failed badly as they did not comprehend the 'local' and the symbols of 'desire' was copy pasted from the 1st world imagination, the (this) language became the cornerstone for contemporary urban expression. 

A stadium hoisting events of the 'India shinning campaign'  and a satellite image of india during Diwali, heavily used during the 'India shinning campaign'

·         Of course contemporary Indian art (the part of which fetches the maximum prices and gets the highest degree of participation in international art spectacles, residencies etc) is constituent of practitioners who have strong (to superficial) left wing or center left ideological positionings. ‘India Shining’ was a center right campaign; I use it to argue that in matters of economic and foreign policy, there is an amazing collision between the new left and the new right. This collision has made it possible for the economic right wing to appropriate subversive Marxist concepts like ‘re-worlding’, and transformed it into something that sees the world as a constellation of cosmopolitan cities (and hence the easy manner in which the India Shining campaign get replaced yet adequately compensated by the ‘India Poised’ campaign.) This act of representing, the politics of such, the innocence of such, and (maybe) most importantly the ‘values’ involved in such can serve as key pegs as one seeks to interrogate the ‘global’, ‘local’ as polemics and conditions. 

The strong winds of neolibelisation that came to us, has only grown stronger and deeply affected our commonsense.  Recently second NDA government launched the 'Make in India Campaign' , which has been accused of being India Shinning on steroids. In the years between 2006-14 , much has changed in the global socio economic imagination. The 2008 financial crisis has lead to Neo liberalism turning aggressive and militaristic. Right now outside the restance pockets in Latin America, privatization, consumerism, war on environment, bing, and spectacle are operating on never before seen global levels. 

"The proverbial cat, however, is now finally out of the bag, for the slogan to ‘Make in India’ is an invitation to global corporate capital to come loot and plunder the natural commons, to destroy the environment, to dispossess populations made dispensable and to exploit cheap Indian labour; it is an invitation to global corporations who are being forced out of their home countries because high environmental and labour costs have been long been eating into their profits. Whether or not the notorious Lawrence Summers Memo of 1991 that talked of moving ‘dirty’ industries to the third world was a serious policy proposal or a mere sarcastic prank, the Modi government seems to have internalized its impeccable economic logic. China was the trail blazer in this regard and one can already see the devastating impact it has had on daily life in China. Even as GDP soars to the skies, daily life gets more and more insecure and violent. That is the direction that the new government has chosen to take India in the name of making India the manufacturing hub of the world. Yes, there will always be people to point out how GDP growth has meant more employment and money circulating among ordinary people at large, but these are the classically myopic economics-drunk people who have not spent a minute thinking about what all this means in the longer run." Aditya Nigam http://kafila.org/2014/10/20/make-in-india-modis-war-on-the-poor/

"On Sunday, along with German Chancellor Angela Mekel, Narendra Modi inaugurated Hannover Messe, World’s largest trade fair. In the fair top businesses from numerous countries participated. Indian P.M Modi said India is an attractive destination and his government will make it easy to conduct business and it will be place where there will not be any surprise element. Raising the pitch for Make in India, he said it is a national movement that covers both businesses and society. We have moved with speed and created confidence both at home as well as abroad. Modi told his audience, we will protect your intellectual rights. The tax system will be more predictable and also talked about new financial instruments to fund nation’s growth. Modi further added, the will to change is there and also it is moving with speed in an right direction. His last line, during the inauguration of the industrial fair along with Merkel, encouraging businessmen from both sides, he said. When the shutter comes down at this industrial fair, I wish many new doors to open."  13th April,2015 http://www.bjptelangana.org/en/tbjp_news/make-in-india-a-new-national-movement-modi

·        

Valay Shende, Scooter, 2007, welded metal buttons, 45 x 70 x 30 in.| IMAGE: COURTESY SEATTLE ART MUSEUM

"SQUARE AVASA for elite: North Face Entrance Concept. East and West facing houses will be of equal priority where north face entrance concept is unique in our project. Individual opinion matters as East shows mental/Spiritual progress with prosperity & North Shows Prosperity with tremondous growth in monetary wise and Wealth.Recreation is plenty at Square Avasa. You can relax by the cool environs of the swimming pool or take a swim to tone your body. For those who are serious about fitness, you have the gym where you can strengthen and beautify your muscles. If you are keen on sports, there is the indoor & out door games facility where you can try your hand at different games or practice Yoga. Besides the excellent landscaping and the shimmering water bodies comfort you to the point of relaxation. SuqareMile Projects Constructions, a leading construction company with good experience and reputation for delivering quality housing" http://www.clickindia.com/detail.php?id=133633946

Art practice does not operate outside socio-political hegemony. One needs  to question whether the dominant forces of contemporary art while claiming for itself a leftist intellectual base is in fact like the British New Labour completely complicit with the right wing in matters of economic and foreign policy.  There is a claim that the fruits of ‘globalization have opened up horizons for ‘contemporary Indian art’, and that the fruits of the strategic and commercial interest shown in the newly liberalised India by the industrially advanced ‘global’ communities since the early 1990s, has had a cultural resonance on the realm of ‘contemporary Indian art’. Over the last decade or so Indian painters and sculptors have enjoyed a measure of visibility in the ‘global’ art structure. They have, more recently, been joined by installation and video artists, and artists’ active in the new digital media, whose projects have outgrown the ‘local’ limitations of production , exhibition and consumption. These young to mid-career artists have been represented (and have represented India) in major international art events, such as the, various Triennales, Biennales and (of course the) Documenta.

·         Their work has been showcased in blockbuster exhibitions organised by prestigious art societies and institutions, the dominant articulation celebrates an articulation to advocate a certain kind of post-modern Indian art, which is rich with the possibilities especially through their value within a particular definition of multiculturalism. However, even in the ideological framing of their practices there is a complete refusal to interrogate this ‘fruits of globalization’ which fellow leftist intellectuals and activists have grave anxieties about.

·         There  is a feeling in some corners that contemporary Indian art has not (yet) established itself as a major and sustained ‘global’ presence. Artists curators claim that this is modest and intermittent by comparison, for instance, with the domineering attendance contemporary Chinese art has secured since its advent on the ‘global’ scene in the late 1980s, or how east and south east Asia have recently become hubs of a much larger scale. However, very rarely do we express concerns about monopolizing of cultural capital, an oligarchic control over knowledge and resources.  We also fail to consider that China as a nation, (and not just its art) enjoy much greater attention than India does on a global scale. It enjoys more attention in the UN, Olympics, Biennales, sea trade…etc. Is it an unfair argument that ‘contemporary Indian art’ cannot locate itself outside the operative hegemony called ‘contemporary India’, and the various hegemonies that operate within it? And is this question relevant even as  (or specifically because) a newly dominant strand within ‘contemporary Indian art’ is deeply engaged with forces blurring national boundaries, taking up representational roles in ‘global art institutions’ and creating an oligarchy of power? 

·         One of the biggest problems has been that the great inflow of financial and cultural capital, have some how bypassed the grassroots infrastructure of Fine Art in India. Institutional neglect, and lack of non-institutionalized support, ensures skeletally existing library facilities, scant archives, and absolute neglect as ‘conditions’ of art colleges all over the India. The net as a medium is extremely difficult to access, and that coupled with the lack of English education, is keeping out art students from the domain of knowledge that is now dominating the multicultural contemporary art. Essentially there is not enough of the (new) money and exposure coming back to nurture, or to even have a debate with the grass roots. It does seem that the poor, peasant, and the proletariat as categories have become grossly out of fashion in Marxist thought, and with that these ‘residual’ categories seem to have lost the right to be ‘talked to’ or engage with…contributing to a collapse of the ‘local’ as a point of consideration. The ‘local’ and its ‘public’ could be the ‘inspiration’ informing the work, can even be the ‘represented’ in the works, but somewhere s/he seems to have lost the right to be considered to be ‘peer’…the work is no longer addressed to him/her.

·         Most people don't talk about it, but the most thriving days for art criticism in India were in the 1920's when a heated debate on the formation of an Indian national style was being played out amongst art journals, popular literary magazines, and newspapers. (Read Partha Mitter, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1850-1922: Occidental Orientations Cambridge University Press, 1995). Today, a critical contestation over arts in the public domain is absolutely unimaginable.#

·         Art criticism in India today essentially find two strands...in one mode the critic represents the artist like a suave court painter; the writer uses skills in rhetoric and imagination (often in collaboration with the artist) to weave and or locate a suitable context and bestow it with cultural capital. Such is the celebrated 'up market’ criticism in India, which helps to legitimize a certain kind of post-modern Indian art, which is rich with the possibilities exiting consumers through their value within a particular definition of multiculturalism. The ability of a critic is, (now) judged by how s/he can represent Indian art in international terms. Clearly the role of the critic as an aesthetic interrogator has no space within contemporary art practices, and one begins to wonder where to locate writings on contemporary Indian art, and consider its role vis-à-vis the production of the analyzable subject and look at what relation does such production have with consumerism?#

·         Print and online magazines have created space for critical art history of contemporary arts, but the print media magazines (due to reasons of funding of the high production cost), hesitate to publish interventionist, alternate writings on art.  The online magazines, on the other hand, have a greater discursive potential. However, currently they suffer from financial instability (the online publishing industry in India is yet to take off), and are yet to ideologically position themselves vis à vis the mainstream.#

• Another key critical vacuum is caused because our attention is so taken up by the mediatic aspect of new media, and we don’t seem to be engaging with what it does to language. We seem to be yet so Ruskinian in our analysis that the media is often read as a vehicle for a direct reflection of the artistic-aesthetic intentions. Especially in the context of new media art, a much more complex analysis of about how media influences language is very important. It is only such an analysis that will help us to understand how language and power operate within the contemporary Indian art society. This is also particularly important because there seems to be an erosion of the notion of the public as peer, and often we forget to make the simple connections between language and communication. Peer-hood now is something that can be found in the globe’s various cosmopolitan pockets where the vernacular (‘local’?) is mostly the ‘other’. This is more significant because new media art is a key instrument through which trans geography articulates.

  Of course this does not mean that a ‘local’ ‘global’ structure should dis-privilege the ‘global’ either. It is the tension that often keeps the balance. The strategic advocacy for the ‘local’ in this article is an attempt to keep the tension alive at a time when the theoretical validity of the ‘local’ is under intense scrutiny. Of course cosmopolitan art contains within itself radical possibilities of counter geography and the cosmopolitan centers of Asia have enabled the creation of a discursive terrain called new Asia rising from the debris of a post Cold War uni-polar world. Is it just the complacency, and the unhindered celebration of the cosmopolitan which is being rendered problematic though this article? Somehow it is also an article that seeks to realize the frame(s) one operates within seeks to understand the extent of implication within which the self dwells. 

Subodh Gupta | U.F.O | 2007 | Brass utensils | 114 x 305 x 305 cm

                                                     ---------------------------------------------------
* Cited from AAA>Diaaalogue > May 2007 > Perspectives  A Note on the Re-worlding of 'Contemporary Indian Art', Rahul Bhattacharya    (http://www.aaa.org.hk/Diaaalogue/Details/33 )

# Cited from Short notes on art history and criticism:, Rahul Bhattacrarya (http://theblackyellowarrow.blogspot.in/2015/06/a-short-note-on-art-history-and.html)

Short notes on art history and criticism:

• Most people don't talk about it, but the most thriving days for art criticism in India were in the 1920's when a heated debate on the formation of an Indian national style was being played out amongst art journals, popular literary magazines, and newspapers. (read Partha Mitter, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1850-1922: Occidental Orientations Cambridge University Press,1995). Today, a critical contestation over arts in the public domain is absolutely unimaginable. 

• Art criticism in India today essentially find two strands...in one mode the critic represents the artist like a suave court painter; the writer uses skills in rhetoric and imagination (often in collaboration with the artist) to weave a suitable context and bestow it with cultural capital. Such is the celebrated 'up market’ criticism in India, which helps to legitimize a certain kind of post-modern Indian art, which is rich with the possibilities exiting consumers through their value within a particular definition of multiculturalism.The other is a strand of independent writing mostly seen online. this is clearly a faltering platform; with writings mostly tending to be personal attacks on artists or institutions , whimsically patronizing or dismissive. 

• For gallery and artists, the legitimate position of the critic is that of a poetic reader into artist's works...his/her role entrenched in the need to need to work within negotiations between art, display, market and cultural capital. The nexus is so complex that almost every (possibly simple), art display sale venture feels the need to generate a larger context around it…masking the more direct viewing of art as a commodity in the financial terms by trying to cast it into a garb of 'culture'.

• The space for critical intervention remains marginal, and the market/art institutions have not shown any sign of engaging with a critic author, whose voice troubles the 'route' the dominant streaks in art production and market. This has become especially true since mid-90s onwards when the space for art criticism in popular print media began to disappear and the media became more interested in reporting art either as investment or as a Page 3 cultural nouveau, elite activity.

• Print and online magazines have created space for critical art history of contemporary arts, but the print media magazines (due to reasons of funding of the high production cost), hesitate to publish interventionist, alternate writings on art.  The online magazines, on the other hand, are a more discursive space. However, currently they suffer from financial instability (the online publishing industry in India is yet to take off), and are yet to ideologically position themselves vis à vis the mainstream. 

• As of right now there is complete lack of analytical understanding regarding the critical trends in the vernacular writing of the country and until such knowledge is assimilated, our understanding of contemporaneity in this country will be severely lacking.  

• There is a lot of discussion about art and contemporary thought generated online over social media. Often in the comments to many posts, one sees a rhizomatic structure of critical analysis.One should begin a  project  and see what methodological implications it leads to. 

• After 2008 and the stagnancy in the market for contemporary art and the settling down of the mediatic fascination, there has been a lot of interests amongst the artists community to engage with critics and historians...to get into an analytical inquiry into one's own practice.  (By and large) this new direction has not yet found teeth because the artists are still very much operating with in the gallery system. As more and more alternate art practices are emerging, the relationship between the artists and the historian is being strengthend.  

• I’m reminded of an observation by Anita Dube, “When the market is at its boom, criticism is at its burst. and when the market falls the value of criticism begins to emerge"

Indian Radical Painters and Sculptors Association- Constellations in the history of Indian Art.

The ‘narrative of Modern Indian Art’ has within it fascinating stories about exclusions and inclusions. The complete erasure of Raja Ravi Varma from the nationalist narratives on Modern Indian Art and the various rediscoveries of his contribution in the decades after independence has been there as a an available signal to any one interested that there is nothing ‘natural’ about the artists and art movements we read about and those we don’t. Certain interventions which are extremely crucial as attempts redefine the very understanding of artistic practice, question its various collaborations…have had received very little space within the mainstream narratives of ‘modern Indian Art’. In a certain sense one can be happy. The inability or the lack of interest shown by the mainstream in appropriating the 40’s art of Hore and Chittoprasad, the Radical Painters and Sculptors Association, the Bastar interventions by Navjot Altav, the oeuvre of John Devraj, is in a way a back handed compliment/tribute to the anti-hegemonic value/strength of their art and artistic practice.

The making of Born Free, a sculpture created by John Devraj with 3000 school children , 1994.

The urge to write this article is triggered off by a memory capsule that has refused to go away with time. During the ‘National Seminar on Art and Activism’ (2004 Baroda), Alex Mathew had finished his slide show, and was answering questions, when an young under-graduate wanted to know about the “Radical Group”; Alex replied …”there is a small paragraph in a book called Contemporary Arts of Baroda”. His reference to Ashis Rajadhyaksh’s the ‘Last Decade’ in the seminal “Contemporary Arts in Baroda’ has to be read (can be read) as a satirical comment on contemporary art historical practices.

Contemporary Art in Baroda, Editor: Gulammohammed SHEIKH, Chapters -The Backdrop - Gulammohammed SHEIKH, A Post-independence Initiative in Art - Nilima SHEIKH, Envisioning the Seventies and the Eighties - Ajay J. SINHA, The Last Decade - Ashish RAJADHYAKSHA, Publisher -Tulika (New Delhi - India)

Between these years I have mildly followed up on what Alex Mathew had to offer that day…and in my these following ups I choose to consider too volumes as relevant…and possibly representation of the mainstreams stories about the growth and life of ‘modern Indian art’, Geeta Kapoor’s When was Modernism and Fifty Years of Indian Art. Fifty Years of Indian Art has two articles, which I would like to juxtapose. Shivaji Pannikars’s Modern Indian Arts: “Art Movements” and Social Space, and Not This Not That And Lots Besides: The Post-Modern Spirit and Indian Art by Himanshu Burte. Infact one can also consider Ratan Parimoo’s article Publications, Magazines, Journals, Polemics published in the same volume . In fact Ratan Parimoo's  article is a revealing piece. It is the only narrative in the volume  (Fifty Years of Indian Art), which ‘clearly’ looks at the development of ‘modern Indian art’ form the perspective of Baroda. Charting a history of publications, influences, group endeavors from Bendre to 1994, Parimoo ’s narrative follows a free flowing force…it is a smooth journey from Bendre to Gulam Sheik and has no room for ‘radical ruptures’ and artist’s suicides. 

Bhupen KHAKHAR, Amitabh Wounded (Exhibition view), 2000, Oil on canvas on board, 243.8cm x 119.4cm. This image captures a work by Bhupen Khakhar in collaboration with Vaman Rao Khaire. It was shown in the exhibition titled 'Bombay/Mumbai 1992-2001.' The exhibition, co-curated by Geeta Kapur and Ashish Rajadhyaksha, was a part of 'Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis' at Tate Modern, London, 2001.
Image source http://www.aaa.org.hk/Collection/CollectionOnline/SpecialCollectionItem/2933

The narrative of ‘modern Indian art’ seems very comfortable dealing with artistic practice, which is neutral/ center/center left, in their aesthetics and politics and unable to really accommodate any radical positions.  Himanshu Burte’s piece on the ‘inside understanding of the Indian postmodern art’ (a periodization often blurred). The Indian postmodernism (in fine arts) can be traced form early Bhupen Khakhar onwards…to be institutionalized with the celebration of the ‘Narrative School’ through the ‘Places for People’ curation. Burte’s piece combines very well with Kapoor’s narrative (in When was Modernism) as both only acknowledge postmodernism in is tamest form…the version Ferdrich Jameson laments as being surface-ial. Burte’s article and the Bombay/Mumbai curation at the Tate Modern, has interesting parallels in the manner they choose to cast the Indian postmodern’…there is a near compete exclusion of the radical-neo avant-garde. The more consumable strands of Pop and the Italian Trans-Avant-garde…have been canonized as the Indian Post Modern.

K.P. Krishnakumar, Untitled (Squatting and Bust), 1985, ink, watercolour on paper, 38.1 × 55.88cm. http://www.afterall.org/journal/issue.36/midnight-dreams_the-tragedy-of-a-lone-revolutionary

K.P. Krishnakumar, Untitled, 1982, ink on paper, 61 × 81cm framed. The drawing reads ‘Friend, we have to be vigilant, because you won’t know when your eyes are going to be gouged out’ in Malayam. Photograph: Christine Clinckx. Courtesy Madhavan K.P. and M HKA, Antwerp

Artist Alex Mathew carving a wood sculpture at the Kasauli Art Centre Sculpture Workshop, 1984. Courtney - http://www.aaa.org.hk/Collection/CollectionOnline/SpecialCollectionItem/3371 

The kind of artists and the set of artistic practices Geeta Kapoor appreciatively historicizes in When Was Modernism (Nasreen, Hussain, Subramanium, Ravi Verma, Ray, Bhupen Khakhar, Sheik,Dodia, Vivan Sundaram), all mirror the role of Kapoor’s own ideologies of aesthetics and politics. Success, recognition, market became involved in a grand discourse, which single- mindedly (and appreciatively) seeks to create a greater visibility and recognition for the Indian contemporary…(and no one can take that credit away from Kapoor).  However one can’t help hoping that we wont learn to accept dominant narratives such as hers are not accepted  (or remembered) as the only available histories. Sometimes when one writes very well…her sophistication masks her ideology almost too well…Nonetheless, it is hard to ignore that there is a mirroring in how the nation remembers Satyajit Ray over Ritwik Ghattak, and how it remembers  Gulam Mohammed Sheikh over K.P Krishnakumar. 

Gulam Mohammed Sheikh :  Art and Art History | Gouache | 30 x 40 cm | 1996 |

Courtesy. Karishma Shah. 

Shivaji Pannikar’s constant celebration of the sub-altern and the increasing personalization of his academic pursuits…allow him encounter and engage with ‘radical ruptures and artist’s suicides’. It takes Pannikar's ability to empathise with the left that leads him to write a ‘history of Indian Art’ charting a history successive anti-hegemonic movements from Souza through Swaminathan, to the ‘Baroda Radicals’. Interestingly Pannikar has been able to fore ground both the radicalism and its failure… which is not felt in Geeta Kapur’s handling or what, lead to Alex to say   “there is a small paragraph in a book called Contemporary Arts of Baroda”. Having lived and worked as a leftist Malayali based in Baroda, Pannikar was perfectly poised to empathise with radicalism embedded in the 'Indian Radical Painters and Sculptors Association'. However Pannikar himself is the carrier of confrontational, heroic, revolutionary leftism that began to loose ground after the 80's. One feels that the journey and disappearance of Krishnakumar form the narrative of art is more nuanced than heroism allows for. 

 "(Curiously and uncannily, 1989 historically marked the collapse of old-style communist idealism in the dateline of the world.)". Anita Dube

Anita Dube studied in the Dept. of Art History, MSU Baroda and specialised in art criticism. She not only worked very closely with the  'Indian Radical Painters and Sculptors Association', she curated and wrote for the group. Within all the chaos of historical positioning Dube wrote a nuanced, personalised historical essay titled Midnight Dreams: TheTragedy of a Lone Revolutionary. Refreshingly Dube does not carry the burden of establishing the revolutionary heroism of Krishnakumar, instead she exposes him with friendly sympathy. No one (not even Panikkar) examines Krishnakumar and his works in such detail, and with changing positions thereby avoiding a narrative biographic sketch. Nonetheless, the contestant over the Baroda Radicals being just a paragraph in history remains. Kochi Muziris Biennale 2012 devoting a section on 'Indian Radical Painters and Sculptors Association' speaks of fresh layers in contestations over the spirit of Indian Art. 

For Re-look 11, we have invited Anita Dube to present the paper she wrote for  “A Manifesto of Questions & Dialogue : A seminar around the practice of K P Krishnakumar and the Kerala Radical Group” organized by Office for Contemporary Art, Norway, and CoLab Art & Architecture, Bangalore at JNU in 2010.

Somberikatte @ 1Shanthiroad : Presents RE-LOOK – Lectures on Indian Art : Midnight Dreams: The Tragedy of a Lone Revolutionary : K P Krishnakumar and the Radicals: a lecture by Anita Dube

  

Art , Nation, Representation on the Edge of Desire

A Reworked version of an essay written in 3 years after the fall of the 1st NDA government - at that point was appalled to see  an young scholar repeat the mistakes of the old. After the 1st year of the 2nd NDA government, feel the need to push for a new liberalism one that celebrates the heterogeneous, the global and the local but works outside nationalism and global capitalism. 

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A critique of  Chaitanya Sambrani's ‘Edge of Desire’ - Recent Art in India'. An that has recieved a lot of fame and aims to take stock of the country’s contemporary cultural heritage, traversing conventional divides between urban, fine art and folk tradition art, and between high culture and popular culture. 

Subodh Gupta, Bihari, 1998, Handmade paper, acrylic, cow dung in PVA solution, LED lights with timer and transformer127 x 96 x 8cm

The ‘Edge ofDesire’ came to town after it had already travelled to England, Australia and the US. One had heard so much about it, a major show curated by Chaitanya Sambrani, co-presented by the Asia society and the Queens Museum. The works span several professional, material, and disciplinary boundaries, extending across urban, gallery-based practice and Adivasi, folk and popular visual cultures. There are clearly visible links, dialogues and arguments across this spectrum. The exhibition seeks to contribute to a contemporary understanding of the multiplicity of the ‘image culture’ in contemporary India. A show of this stature, showcasing Indian art had allegedly never been give shape before. When one encounters such accolades, it is always useful to run it down memory lane. Geeta Kapur’s Bombay/Mumbai at Tate Modern immediately comes to mind.

How useful is it to get into a scale comparison; it never is able to evaluate the impact. On the contrary, it might be right to ignore Geeta  Kapur for the moment and visit ‘Edge of Desire’ through an article written by Arindam Dutta titled  ‘The Politics of Display: India 1886 and 1986 (Journal of Arts and Ideas, Nos. 30-31), and Tapati Guha’s Thakurta’s ‘Marking Independence’, which scrutinises the policies that inform the setting up the inaugural display of the National Museum and defines itself as “the first serious attempt towards stock-taking of the nation’s heritage through the event of an art exhibition.” (Cited from ‘Marking Independence: The Ritual of a National art Exhibition’, Journal of Arts and Ideas, Nos. 30-31). Especially of relevance is the part where Tapati concentrates on the setting up of the (rather small) ‘contemporary’ section and the politics behind the selection of Bendre, Abanendranath Tagore, Hussain, Amrita Shergill and some others.

Edge of Desire claims to be the first serious stocktaking of the country’s contemporary cultural heritage. Positioning itself as a show that traverses conventional divides between urban, fine art and folk tradition art, and between high culture and popular culture, it claims to represent a time of socio-political transformation in India. The exhibition addresses contemporary political, social, and environmental realities existing in India. The selection, (of 36 artists and three collectives from both urban and rural India produced from the early 1990s to the present) explores the role of place and desire in the creation of visual art in contemporary India, at a time defined by economic globalisation and political fundamentalism. (In an oxymoronic way, the show operates by seeking to generate desire around contemporary Indian art.) The exhibition investigates the impact of these germinal forces on the work of a diverse group of artists who (according to the curator) represent different generations, regions and social contexts, and in Sambrani’s judgment reflect contemporary Indian society’s constantly shifting experiences of caste alliances, class structures, and global trends in localised settings. It is because the exhibition carries claims of such a representation that one is invited to interrogate the politics of representation informing the exhibition.


The way the show seeks to define and echo the many ethnicities, languages, religions, political ideologies, and social strata that define modern India betrays a ideological positioning, which would have been labelled hypocritical and pseudo-secularist not too long back when saffron was hounding the centre-left and had turned institutions of culture (visibly) into terrains of contestation.  Even tough we are more comfortable with this kind of outdated liberalism, it is important to remember this kind of seculirm has remained terribly insulated and failed to represent the larger heterogeneity of the Indian Subcontinent and (possibly) thereby loosing ground to populist Hinduvta. 

Of course, when one questions the politics of representation, then ‘who’ is representing in front of ‘whom’ assumes greater significance. The Edge of Desire needs to be seen from two perspectives, one a representation of ‘contemporary Indian art ’ to an audience abroad and the other as a show to challenge preconceptions of contemporary India, whose presence in Western culture is often limited to Bollywood, yoga, outsourcing and the curry. According to the Asia Society Museum Director Melissa Chiu. “This exhibition aims to do for contemporary Indian art what Inside Out: New Chinese Art did in 1998 for raising awareness of the vibrant art scene in China.” However, when the show travels to India and is showcased in the National Gallery of Modern Art, the shifts in the semiotic value become tremendous. It suddenly becomes hierarchical–invested with the authority of the state that claims to represent the nation.

Raj Kumar; Apne Zindagi Ka Khambha (The Pillar of My Life) I, 2002-2003

When the show first opened in Australia, it was arranged in five interlocking thematic categories. These thematic divisions suggest flows across porous boundaries rather than watertight compartments. In New York, Edge of Desire was presented at two locations, the Asia Society Museum and the Queens Museum of Art. The Asia Society Museum featured the categories ‘Unruly Visions’ and ‘Location/Longing’, and the Queens Museum of Art featured ‘Transient Self’, ‘Contested Terrain’ and ‘Recycled Futures’. Though there is a sequence in the way the exhibition was conceived, inherently, the viewer was invited to see it as groupings by thematic structure, offered as a way of entry into this rich, complex and varied body of work that is unflinching in its encounter with the contemporary world.

To a great extent, the exhibition addresses religion and politics (specially the part originally shown as Contested Terrain. Gulammohammed Sheikh’s works depict the obliteration of the Babri Masjid in 1992 that has in a certain way been a loss of innocence for Indian secularism (The loss of Babri Masjid becomes the dominat theme of this section) . NN Rimzon's moving installation, Speaking Stones, is an anguished scream reacting to the loss. And Nilima Sheikh's decorative-poetic large scrolls describe the Kashmir of her youth, before it became a site of communal contestation.  RUMMANA HUSSAIN's seminal Home/Nation  is poetic articulation of torment, which was disappearing from memory just because it was not being seen around. Nalini Malani’s installation, The Sacred and the Profane (1998), projects a play of shadows from images painted in acrylic on large, rotating Mylar cylinders. Her work challenges notions of separation and insularity. A series of works (2003) by Santosh Kumar Das respond to communal violence in Gujarat, referencing a figurative tradition of Madhubani painting of juxtaposing recent events with historical figures such as Mahatma Gandhi. 

Rummana Hussain; 

Home Nation, 1996  

Multipart installation including wooden planks, plastic folders, photographs, glass bottles,

 cloth; 5.6 x 4 m

In the last decade, it has become clear that the Nehruvian notion of secularism is struggling to find relevancy in the post-Babri Masjid times (read ‘Secularism and Its Critics’, edited by Rajeev Bhargava), and what is troubling about the exhibition is that none of those lessons seem to have been learnt, and its claims towards heterogeneity seem to have been lost in an homogenous articulation of political concerns. The absence of K. P KrishnaKumar, Manjit Bawa, Akkitham Narayanan and some other voices hint that the ‘Contested Terrain’ is very narrowly understood, and such a show coming in during Congress rule is temptation to return and continue this piece….trying to decode the Edge of Desire….what is the desire? 

N.N. Rimzon, Speaking Stones, 1998, Photographs (laminated), stones, resin fiberglass, marble dust (on figure)
90 x 500cm (diameter)

When one came across, the Director of the National Gallery of Modern Art, Rajeev Lochan’s quote in the Hindu: "By bringing this highly acclaimed, cutting-edge exhibit to India, the NGMA hopes to facilitate a meaningful engagement between artists and their works, and to understand how the art resonates in its own environment”, one could not help wondering as to whether it would have been possible for the NGMA to bring in a show like this when the NDA government was in power. Of course we always use timing as a political stategy to bypass censorship, but the point is that is Chaitanya Sambrani is self reflective about how the nation is imagined and showcased and how his imagination simply  echos Geeta Kapur's and Jyotindra Jain's scholarship...and theby the politics of their imagination. 

Nataraj Sharma; Freedom Bus or A View from the 6th Standard, 2001-2004, Iron, wood, electrical moto, oil and enamel paint on paper, ink jet prints, rubber tyres, electroplating
103 x 237 x 76cm