ECH Blog 2019

The Experimenter Curators Hub offers one of the few discursive spaces in the sub-continent on curatorial practice. In his introductory remarks, Prateek Raja, underlined the continued need for making available a platform for contrarian ideas. More so, he added, in polarizing times such as ours. “A year to resist,” was the clarion call that Priyanka Raja issued shortly thereafter.

This year’s Hub falls within Experimenter’s tenth anniversary celebrations and was helmed again by Natasha Ginwala, Associate Curator at Gropius Bau, Berlin and Artistic Director of Gwangju Biennale 2020 with Defne Ayas. She set the stage for three intensive days of discussion by highlighting the fact that though the Hub had no thematic focus, it offered an informal learning environment and an opportunity to think about curating in different registers. She also stressed the need for reflecting on critical regionalism and on a practice of building friendships, away from imperial models.

“Transcultural Formations” was the title of the presentation by the first speaker of the day, Naomi Beckwith, Manilow Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. She first chose to dwell on matters top of her mind such as the relationship between institutions and sources of their funding, especially on the question of whether the money that was flowing in was ethical. Her other preoccupation centred around what happened to Third World Alliances such as NAM and the kind of utopian thinking it brought with it, calling to attention artist Naeem Mohaeimen’s film for documenta14 on the subject.

Talking about her work on representation and the need for non-Eurocentric models, Beckwith remarked that there was a lot of pressure on museums to take corrective action and stressed the need to develop “new languages, new thoughts and new structures.”

After setting this initial context, Beckwith remarked that she wanted to dedicate the talk to Okwui Enwezor and Bisi Silva—Nigerian curators who had changed the terms of how we think of global art. Their outlook helped her understand that the project was not just about representation but the need to go deeper into structural issues and the mode of production. This also alerted her to the need for telling new stories and constructing new frames for identity formation. Within the context of Black Art, she mentioned the many mis-readings of identity politics and the binary created between aesthetic and activist art. Beckwith’s statements brought to mind the question raised by Pedro de Almeida, a presenter at one of the Hub’s earlier editions, about how one could have political agency while still being an artist? He had gone on to add that the American novelist and playwright James Baldwin’s novels suffered because of his political activism.

Beckwith mentioned why the work of Enwezor and Silva was important to her personally: she considers herself “an reformed pan-Africanist,” who loves the work of the black diaspora. Furthermore she is invested in reconstructing smarter art histories for any artist but specially women and artists of colour. To demonstrate her concerns Beckwith dwelt on two exhibitions that she had curated: The Freedom Principle: Experiments In Art and Music 1965 to Now and the solo exhibition of Howardena Pindell, an artist and curator.

Nora Razian, the Head of Exhibitions at Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai, joined via Skype and spoke about her ongoing exhibition, Phantom Limb and talked about the cultural artefacts that were extracted from sites and placed in museums around the world. She also talked about the networks that allowed the artefacts to be extracted in the first place and the response of the various artists to it. She also dwelt on the various roles the Jameel Arts Centre plays in response to a question raised by Ginwala during the Q&A session.

CAMP’s Shaina Anand was the last speaker of the day. Besides talking about CAMP’s various projects, such as the online archive pad.ma and Indiancine.ma and the space for annotations, live editing and interventions within the platform by scholars and film makers, she highlighted that in South Asia, practitioners were often called upon to play multiple roles such as those of an artist, architect and curator. She also stressed the need for shared generosity and shared curiosity—something that the ECH offers in ample measure.

— Meera Menezes is an art writer and critic and is the Delhi Correspondent for the magazine Art India.

Moderator Natasha Ginwala set the stage for the second day of the Hub by quoting a passage from Thoughts on the planetary: An interview with Achille Mbembe. The words certainly struck a chord, eliciting spontaneous applause from the audience. It read: Honouring truth comes with the commitment to learn and remember together. As Édouard Glissant never ceased to reiterate, each of us needs the memory of the other. This is not a matter of charity or compassion. It is a condition for the survival of our world. If we want to share the world’s beauty, he would add, we ought to learn to be united with all its suffering. We will have to learn to remember together, and this doing, to repair together the world’s fabric and its visage. Restitution will always be partial. There are irreparable losses that no compensation can ever bring back – which does not mean it is not necessary to compensate. To have compensated, does not mean to have erased the wrong. To compensate, as Kwame Anthony Appiah underlines, is about offering to repair the relation.

Devika Singh, Curator, International art at Tate Modern, London, UK, was the first speaker of the day and her presentation focussed on networks of exchange—not just South Asian artists travelling abroad but artists from abroad who came to South Asia, necessitating a change in the way we think of cosmopolitanism. Singh presented two exhibitions she had curated: Planetary Planning, at the Dhaka Art Summit (2018) and Homelands: Art from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan now at Kettle’s Yard, UK.

Talking about the Homelands project, she mentioned that one of the things that was common to the participating artists was the tone they deployed. She also picked up on what Beckwith had called out the day before on the binary between aesthetics and politics in artists’s works terming it a “false binary” and stressed that the works in her show had the ability to transcend these. One question she had to grapple with while staging the exhibition was how to present the works to an audience that was not familiar with the underlying issues. She also responded to Beckwith’s assertion the previous day that “art historians and curators are different breeds” by stating that “art history and curatorial practice needs to go together.”

Paz Guevara’s presentation was certainly one of the most engaging talks of the day, especially in light of the new research material that she threw up. As a curator, researcher and author based in Berlin, she is currently collaborating in the long-term project Kanon-Fragen at Haus der Kulturen der Welt - HKW in Berlin, Germany. As one of the curators of the exhibition Parapolitics: Cultural Freedom and the Cold War (2017-2018) she shed light on the organization, the Congress for Cultural Freedom, founded in West Berlin in 1950 and its financing by the CIA. The organization staged several exhibitions, supported the trip of art critics such as Clement Greenberg to India and also financed several magazines. The organization also repositioned artists who had been termed degenerate by the Nazis as those espousing the cause of freedom and propagated the belief that abstract art was not political. Guevara also touched upon the Afro-Sonic Mapping project by musician and artist Satch Hoyt (2019), with Ginwala in the Q&A session. Tarun Nagesh in his presentation spoke about the history of the Asia Pacific Triennale (APT) , the questions that the curators had to grapple with and the challenges of working in “such a dynamic part of the world.” He also dwelt on how the APT had contributed to trans-regional exhibition frameworks developing in the region and the tricky subject of how to deal with subjects of political importance and trauma. Nagesh’s presentation also highlighted the different manifestations of wealth, power and currency in APT9 and how different spiritualities are expressed in contemporary art in the Asia-Pacific region. He also responded to a question by Zoe Butt of how the APT has expanded the notion of Asia to include the Middle East.

The last speaker of the day was NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati. Based in Kathmandu, Nepal, she co-founded the Nepal Picture Library and is also a co-founder and Festival Director of Photo Kathmandu. In a very powerful and moving presentation NayanTara talked about the Feminist Memory Project, an index of the lives of Nepali women and the attempt to render them visible as well as Imperfect Solidarities conceived as a response to an invitation to collaborate in the Curriculum of Studies into Darkness by artist Amar Kanwar. In the Q&A session with Ginwala, she also talked about the #MeToo movement in the creative arts in Nepal and the formulation of a code of conduct for Photo Kathmandu. The attempt she highlighted to bring victims and perpetrator together on a common platform tied in perfectly with the opening remarks by Ginwala on the need for repair and restitution.

— Meera Menezes is an art writer and critic and is the Delhi Correspondent for the magazine Art India.

"Another world is not only possible, she's on the way and, on a quiet day, if you listen very carefully you can hear her breathe." With this quote by writer Arundhati Roy, moderator Natasha Ginwala launched the Hub’s Day 3 proceedings. Lydia Lee, currently Chief Curator at Whitechapel Gallery, prefaced her presentation by announcing that she came of age when curators were not trained in curatorial studies but in art history. She recalled that during her Whitney study programme Hal Foster had once remarked, “come up with a great idea, don’t worry about the art, we will commission it” Lee realized that here was a completely different way of working, which did not involve looking at the art! Lee decided to spotlight a couple of her projects, which would give the audience an idea of the range of time, scale and funding sources involved. The first of these was at the Barbican Centre titled Bauhaus: Art as Life. She also drew attention to the Frieze talks she co-curated earlier in the year on 100 years after Bauhaus. She drew the audience’s attention to the fact that the Bauhaus was forced to close because of the Nazi movement and there were parallels to the current moment with the rise of the Right impacting cultural organizations in Brazil, Turkey and the UK. Lee dwelt at length on the manifesto of the Bauhaus, the vision of dismantling the hierarchy between arts and crafts, and the contributions of various participants such as Walter Gropius, Johannes Itten, Josef Albers, Oskar Schlemmer and Lazlo Moholy-Nagy.

Apart from the Barbican, Yee highlighted two of her projects at the Whitechapel gallery, Is This Tomorrow? which referenced the Whitechapel Gallery’s landmark exhibition This Is Tomorrow (1956) and Leonor Antunes: Frisson of the Togetherness. In the former Lee invited artists to work together with architects, unlike in the 1956 exhibition, which had a natural coming together of the two groups as they were interacting with each other on a regular basis. In the Q&A that followed Ginwala talked about how the Bauhaus centennial had resulted in “Bauhaus fatigue” and expressed the need to expand the notion of Bauhaus. She drew attention to the “Bauhaus Imaginista” project curated by Marion von Osten and Grant Watson, which decentralized this important institution by looking at the resonances between Santiniketan, National Institute of Design (NID) and Bauhaus.

Before talking about her projects Zoe Butt, Vietnam-based curator and writer, saw it pertinent to present two statements that she tussled with every single day. The first, a quote from Donna Haraway, read “It matters what thoughts think thoughts. It matters what knowledges know knowledges. It matters what relations relate relations. It matters what worlds world worlds. It matters what stories tell stories.” The second quote was by Naquib Mahfouz, “Home is not where you were born. Home is where all your attempts to escape cease.”

Butt went on to speak about her reasons for leaving the museum world—she had been an Assistant Curator at the Queensland Art Gallery—and mentioned her discomfort at how curators could claim the right to speak for artists when they had not experienced close up the contexts in which the artists work. She foregrounded how she has tried to attach herself to contexts, where she did not curate exhibitions. Far more important for her was the space of dialogue and creating spaces of trust as well as how to navigate restrictive regulations as a curator. She also highlighted the dangers posed when Vietnamese artists went on residencies awarded by foreign cultural institutions only to return to their country and find, to their frustration, no opportunities available to them.

The first project that Butt spoke about was “Leaving the Echo Chamber” at the Sharjah Biennale14, where she was one of three curators. The project allowed her to revisit a number of conversations with artists and projects that had till then never had the chance to be realized. In particular she picked out the projects by Tuan Andrew Nguyen and Jompet Kuswidananto on the fascinating and oft forgotten linkages and stories between countries of the Globalizing Souths. In turn a project by Ahmad Fuad Osman opened a thread for her on “History as Fiction.” Butt also touched upon her work at San Art and The Factory in Vietnam as well as an upcoming project “Re-aligning the Cosmos.” To a question posed by Ginwala in the Q&A about how retelling of stories/histories could be open to manipulation and how to safeguard this process, Zoe cautioned fellow curators not to rush to make things visible. Instead she urged them to get the work done and strategize how to make it visible and to what end.

In the post lunch session, artist Anita Dube took centrestage to talk about her curation of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB). Mentioning that she was asked by several people before the KMB if she was going to stage a political biennale, she was clear that while she wanted to do politics, she wanted to do it completely differently. For her politics was a very clear understanding of the moment. Dube went on to outline some key strands of thought while conceptualizing the Biennale, which had as its key theme: “Possibilities for a Non-Alienated Life.” Dube pointed out that though we were ostensibly hyper-connected, we were still deeply alienated and her intention was to build a sense of community and comradeship through sharing. She was keenly aware that the Right Wing had appropriated the feeling of community through violence and given her own political understanding as a feminist and communist, she wanted to create a sense of community outside majoritarian movements. She emphasized the need to bring pedagogy and pleasure together by quoting Emma Goldmann: “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.”

Dube mentioned that her main agenda was to work against the spectacle and to empower the margins to lead the way. She also acknowledged the contribution of Bracha Ettinger, both as a participating artist and also for her concept of “Withness.” Equally important for her as the curator of the KMB were ideas of fragility, repair, renewal and resistance. In the Q&A session that followed Dube mentioned that her idea of having the Pavilion as an anarchic space and a counterpoint to the main Biennale did not take off in the way she had hoped. She also fore grounded the need to rethink large exhibitions and bemoaned the resistance of Indian artists to critical theory.

At the end of day 3, in keeping with the time-worn tradition of the Hub, all the curators gathered in the well of the gallery to dialogue with each other and the audience. Some of the topics that came up for discussion were around the curator’s responsibility of building trust with the artists, the dangers of artists’ practices being shaped in certain ways to gain currency with curators, the role of the curator, how curators strike a balance between art and activism and finally the need for spaces of dissensus. As Zoe Butt quietly but forcefully reminded the gathering, “as a curator you need to cultivate greyness”

— Meera Menezes is an art writer and critic and is the Delhi Correspondent for the magazine Art India.

Devika Singh talks about the history of transnational artistic exchanges and the need to be attuned to the historical disjunctures of the twentieth century in South Asia.

Devika Singh is Curator, International art at Tate Modern, London, UK. She was previously the Smuts research fellow at the Centre of South Asian Studies of the University of Cambridge . Her exhibitions include ‘Planetary Planning’ at the Dhaka Art Summit (2018) and ‘Homelands: Art from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan’ at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (2019).

Meera Menezes: Your exhibition for the 2018 Dhaka Art Summit took a 1969 lecture by architect Buckminster Fuller, ‘Planetary Planning,’ as its point of departure. Why did you zero in on this lecture in particular and how did it inform your curatorial proposition for the show?

Devika Singh: I came across this little known Nehru Memorial lectured delivered in Delhi by Buckminster Fuller in the context of my book research on art in India in the first decades after independence. Several things interested me in this lecture. First, Fuller claims at some point that India ‘should declare itself to be the first self-inherent home of world man’. It should renounce sovereign claims, open up its citizenship and be a cradle for all humanity, Fuller proposed. Second, Fuller was concerned with creating a more equitable division of global resources and technology. He believed that the geodesic structure could help solve India’s housing problem. His ideas were utopian, but they differed from contemporaneous spiritual approaches to India. It is the social implications of his ideas and inventions that structured his engagement with the region and continue to make, I believe, his thinking relevant. In addition, the lecture also belongs to the rich history of transnational exchanges that have happened in South Asia. The exhibition I curated at the Dhaka Art Summit in 2018 used the lecture as a starting point to explore notions of world making that have been articulated by three generations of artists from the 1940s until now, always using South Asia as their pivotal axis.

Meera Menezes: Your exhibition 'Homelands: Art from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan' is currently on at Kettle’s Yard. Given our colonial ties, what does one need to be cognizant of, both in terms of display and reception, when presenting art from the subcontinent in Britain?

Devika Singh: Generally speaking, one has to be attentive to and try to remain cognizant of how a particular curatorial proposition will fit within the wider goals of an institution. This is so regardless. But it takes on a particular importance when displaying art from the subcontinent in the UK. While engaging with UK-South Asia relations is not necessarily the main topic of an exhibition, paying attention to the wider context of the exhibition is key.

Meera Menezes: Travel, migration and “historical junctures and disjunctures of South Asia” seem to be some of the themes that are common to your curatorial projects. Why do these continue to preoccupy you?

Devika Singh: This is accurate. I believe these are themes that have, among others, constructed modern South Asia and which inform many fascinating artworks, both present and past. In my writing I have argued that a history of artistic mobility and transfers that puts an emphasis on exchanges and, broadly speaking, positive outcomes should also be attuned to the historical disjunctures of the twentieth century, which have in short forced people into contact. In regard to contemporary art, the complex experience of citizenship has impacted many artists in South Asia, and elsewhere too.I predict these themes will continue to serve as a critical lens in my work.

NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati on rendering women’s histories visible and ideas of ‘groundless solidarity’ and ‘infinite responsibility.’

NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati is based in Kathmandu, Nepal and works at the intersections of visual storytelling, research, pedagogy, and collective action. In 2011, she co-founded Nepal Picture Library; a digital archiving initiative that works towards diversifying Nepali social and cultural history. NayanTara is also the co-founder and Festival Director of Photo Kathmandu,an international festival that takes place in Kathmandu every two years.

Meera Menezes: Why did you feel the need to build a visual archive examining women’s histories in Nepal? What methodology did you adopt in putting together this archive?

NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati: We believe that a visual archive is remarkably effective as “evidence”, as we see for ourselves claims to history that have been ignored by mainstream history-makers. It renders history “visible” and can enter peopleV’s imaginations in powerful ways. We found that efforts to locate women in history have often been limited to celebrating successful women. We felt the need to move beyond these forms of canonization. We also felt the need to move beyond mere representation. The Feminist Memory Project is an open and on-going process that attempts to index the lives of Nepali women and what they have been ‘doing’ throughout history – which includes political organizing, writing about their lives and the world, creating means of education and learning, as well as archiving other women’s experiences in various ways.

The initial research began with a team of researchers in mid-2018 that included Agastaya Thapa, Nisha Rai, Nikita Tripathy, Yutsha Dahal and my friend, co-curator and the cerebral force behind this project Diwas Raja Kc. We started by organizing a series of reading and discussion seminars as a way for to reflect on and discuss the need for such an archive, our approach to visual research and key feminist issues. The team then spent about 5 months identifying and meeting with individuals and institutions who contributed material and knowledge to the archive. Diwas has a background in labour and peasant histories, Agastaya, Nisha, Nikita and Yutsha all tapped into their personal and professional interests and networks, and the archive grew day by day, entirely because of their enthusiasm and persistence. This is an on-going initiative for us and we are continuing the research as well as engagement with the material that exists so far.

Meera Menezes: This visual archive led to the exhibition “The Public Life of Women: A Feminist Memory Project,” of which you were one of the curators. What was the curatorial approach you took for the show?

NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati: The act of being photographed in itself is an act of becoming public, being seen. The first iteration of the Public Life of Women took place at Photo Kathmandu in 2018. The festival takes place entirely in public spaces, so the exhibition really built on this idea of publicness. In many ways, the exhibition was an announcement of this initiative to the Nepali public, an open invitation to them locate themselves in it, and to further contribute to it, as we see archiving and history-making very much as a dialogic process.

Meera Menezes: Your “Imperfect Solidarities” program was conceived as a response to an invitation to collaborate in the Curriculum of Studies into Darkness by artist Amar Kanwar. How did this program evolve and what role did the collections in the Nepal Picture library play in the explorations by participants?

NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati: Amar's invitation became a way to begin this very special collaboration with Prathama Raghavan who is a therapist, disability professional and a dear friend. The first exploration took place in April 2019 which was a screening of Amar’s film ‘Such a Morning’ followed by an open conversation with Amar. Through his work, Amar speaks of searching for a way to re-comprehend the difficult times we live in. “What is it that lies beyond, when all arguments are done with? How to reconfigure and respond again?” he asks. At Nepal Picture Library we had spent 2018 working on the Feminist Memory Project and that process had thrown up many questions for us about the possibilities and challenges of solidarity building, movement building and collective action. Imperfect Solidarity (ImSol) became a response to these questions and prompts.

Prathama introduced me to the narrative approaches and the inspiring work and thinking around ideas of ‘groundless solidarity’ and ‘infinite responsibility’ as articulated by direct action activist Vikki Reynolds. Imperfect Solidarities is greatly inspired by the work of Vikki and her community. We have tried to develop it as a local framework of coming together to challenge binaries, build (imperfect, momentary, flawed but useful) ‘groundless’ solidarities across differences, deconstruct biases, learn to listen to each other, inhabit the grey areas of discomfort and create a network of accountable allies.

So far, we have had a total of 9 explorations on different topics. Each exploration, as we have been calling the seminars, has offered participants a unique opportunity to engage with peers; activists, artists, educators, lawyers, journalists, therapists who have all shaped, participated in and made pivotal contributions to various movements and campaigns across issues. Themes have ranged from sexual violence, to learning from nature, to ways of memorializing the past. The curricular paradigm has been exploratory – and not geared towards teaching. The intent has been to create space for difficult conversations.

The ImSol explorations have been a super valuable opportunity for me to develop the curatorial thinking and planning for the next edition of Photo Kathmandu. The last exploration for this year will be on ‘hope’. We plan to continue these explorations into 2020.

Lydia Yee talks about art, architecture and design and the need to revisit ideas of collaboration.

Lydia Yee has been Chief Curator at Whitechapel Gallery since 2015 and most recently curated Is This Tomorrow? (2019), Ulla von Brandenburg: Sweet Feast (2018) and Leonor Antunes: The Frisson of the Togetherness (2017). She is also co-curator of the Frieze Talks programme (2018–present).

Meera Menezes: Is This Tomorrow? takes as its model Whitechapel Gallery’s landmark exhibition This Is Tomorrow (1956), which featured 37 British architects, painters and sculptors. Why did you feel it was important to revisit the 1956 exhibition at this juncture in time?

Lydia Yee: Given all the challenges we face in the 21st century, I thought it was important to revisit the ideas of collaboration raised by This Is Tomorrow (1956). The disciplines of art and architecture have a shared history, but seem to be moving in different paths. Each have their own approaches and ways of working that are useful to the other. While art has a great potential for asking questions, raising concerns and storytelling, architecture has a pragmatic approach, the potential to solve concrete problems and the ability to influence human behaviour.

Meera Menezes: With your show Bauhaus: Art as Life what particular aspects of the Bauhaus movement did you want to highlight and why?

Lydia Yee: I wanted to highlight that the Bauhaus was, first and foremost, a school and not a design style or a movement. Many people also associate the Bauhaus with a streamlined design aesthetic, but that was only one aspect of the school's history; in the early years it fostered a hands-on approach to arts education and a synthesis of arts and crafts training. I believe these pedagogical principles continue to be valuable today. Ultimately, the Bauhaus was a place where art and life intersected on a daily basis.

Meera Menezes: Leonor Antunes: frisson of the togetherness at the Whitechapel gallery was an exhibition, in which Antunes referenced overlooked figures, particularly women, in the history of twentieth-century architecture, art and design. What role did you play in the show as a curator – was it a collaborative exercise with the artist?

Lydia Yee: Leonor Antunes's project for Whitechapel Gallery was a commission and, for this type of project, it is important for the curator to work closely with the artist. We discussed her interest in overlooked women in art, architecture and design and also the Whitechapel Gallery's history, particularly the 1956 exhibition This is Tomorrow, which included only three women out of thirty-seven participants. We also made research trips - including to the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds and an exhibition of British Constructivism from the Catherine Petitgas Collection at Pallant House in Chichester - to see and learn about some of these artists.

Meera Menezes: Over the years the Experimenter Curators Hub has offered a platform for some of the world’s best curators to share insights into their curatorial practice and approach. What sets the ECH apart from other initiatives that bring curators together on a common stage?

Prateek and Priyanka Raja: The Experimenter Curators’ Hub allows for the creation of an intimate space and an environment of openness to discuss and debate curatorial practices, thought processes, challenges and opportunities that define contemporary exhibition making. A spirit of fearlessness, dialogue and dissent are cornerstones of the Hub and this defines the unique nature of this coming together of some of the finest minds in contemporary art today. There is probably no other situation like this that builds this kind of an environment of professional camaraderie, rooted in conversation and intellectual dialogue. The other biggest factor that makes the hub different from other curatorial gatherings is the audience that Kolkata attracts. The audience brings a very different kind of knowledge to the hub and with equal time spent on discussion between the audience and the curators, the hub becomes a very energised space. 

Meera Menezes: How did you go about selecting the curators for the 9th edition of the ECH? What drew you to their practice and what, according to you, are some of the common themes or agendas that tie them together?

Prateek and Priyanka Raja: We would be naive to think that we are in a position to select the curators. We follow their practices in deep admiration sometimes over years, and aspire to have them with us at the hub. Through the year we are in constant conversation with Natasha Ginwala who works closely with us during the hub to think of the curators we can work with for the year. There is no overt underlying theme, but there are many strands of thought processes that are inter-related and these emerge during the conversations. Also this year is special to us. Of the 10 invited curators, 9 are women who are frontrunners in their work, and have consistently pushed boundaries of the art world through their practice. 

Meera Menezes: How do you feel past presenters have benefited from their participation at the ECH and what can audiences expect from this edition of the Hub?

Prateek and Priyanka Raja: Over the years we have had various experiences from past presenters. Often the intimacy and space for free discussion allows them to introspect on their own work and reflect on the work of their colleagues, whose work they already know. The hub provides for a rare opportunity to discuss their work in a free flowing conversation. The audience, as I mentioned earlier, is diverse, has intellectual capital in cross referencing between fields of art, literature, philosophy, politics and this cross pollination of ideas enables new possibilities and ideas. Mostly we as the audience take away insights that cannot be really quantified and participants who have returned over the years end up qualitatively thinking of contemporary practices differently. It allows a critical worldview into the world of contemporary art and we are able to introduce the curators—with whom we have the privilege of interacting with through our work—to our city. 

Tarun Nagesh on indigenous practices, how different spiritualities are expressed in contemporary art in the Asia-Pacific region, and different manifestations of wealth, power and currency in APT9.

Tarun Nagesh is Curator of Asian Art at Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) in Brisbane, Australia. He is part of the lead curatorial team of the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT), primarily working with artists in South and South East Asia for the 7th, 8th and 9th editions. One of his recent projects was KalpaVriksha:Contemporary Indigenous and Vernacular Art of India (as part of APT8).

Meera Menezes: For the 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT8) you developed the special focus project Kalpa Vriksha: Contemporary Indigenous and Vernacular Art of India. What made you highlight vernacular forms of art and how did you create a dialogue between this project and the rest of the Triennial?

Tarun Nagesh: The APT has a history of developing these focus projects which offer a chance to look deeper into a context, type of practice or idea, but APT has also been known as a space to include practices that might seem to sit outside mainstream contemporary art discourse. This is in part due to the long engagement with indigenous practices (from Australia and elsewhere) from the very beginning, as well as representing a diversity of practices from the Pacific and throughout different contexts in Australia and Asia—so in one sense there were a number of natural resonances with other works in the exhibition. There was also the precedent of including the work of Sonabai in the 3rd Asia Pacific Triennial in 1999, so it was a subject that had been introduced much earlier. Ultimately however, there was such a great depth and richness in what is often referred to as vernacular practices in India and many artists drawing on traditions but using them in new ways, so it was a great field to explore.  There were some strong connections across the exhibition with how artists represented their relationships to place and environment making this in turn an element that connected the project to other works. In the same space there was the work of Australian Indigenous artists such as Danie Mellor, who is known for illustrations of his own traditional country. Also, in an adjacent space there were paintings by Tibetan artists such as Tsherin Sherpa which was also an interesting way to compare how artists explore spiritualities in contemporary ways. APT8 also had a strong focus on different forms of performance and I thought this was another really interesting point to consider with relation to practices in India, many of which are so strongly associated with performance, singing and storytelling.   This project also became an opportunity to think about existing and possible connections between indigenous practices in Australia and India, and this was something that Gond artist Venkat Raman Singh Shyam spoke so passionately about at the time. His uncle, Jangarh Singh Shyam made a number of collaborative works with Australian artists (which have been said to have influenced contemporary Gond art), including the well known painter Djambawa Marawili, and the exhibition also included Gunybi Ganambarr who was mentored by Marawili, so some of these connections were fascinating to explore.     

Meera Menezes: The Asia-Pacific Triennial (APT) covers a vast territory of very diverse practices. Over the years what are some of the common thematic elements that you have been able to trace and foreground?

Tarun Nagesh: The APT generally doesn’t subscribe to a single thematic premise for each exhibition. One of the reasons for this I believe is that it is indeed far too diverse a region with such different social contexts as well as contexts for making art, so any overarching theme would probably be treated unevenly. However, we develop the APT with a small curatorial team so we are in constant discussions during the research and early development about important issues or thematic currents that are happening in the region and to explore how these might connect practices. Given the scale of the exhibition across two galleries with multiple spaces there is then great opportunity to stage a number of different thematic groupings, and further explore these through discursive platforms. Some of the thematic pursuits that arose in APT9 recently was different manifestations of wealth, power and currency. This was fore grounded by a focus project entitled ‘Women’s wealth’ which included artists from Bougainville, The Solomon Islands and Australia to investigate the cultural value systems that operate in spaces of women’s creativity, but also connected to works such as Qiu Zhijie’s ‘Map of Technological Ethics’, and Burmese artist Sawang diagram of power structures and events complicit in Myanmar’s history. Another group of works traced how different spiritualities manifest in contemporary art in the Asia-Pacific region and how these can be harnessed to raise broader social and political issues. Through APT9 we also thought about histories of non-objective practices and how these have evolved and influence art in the Asia Pacific region, sometimes in dialogue with Western art, sometimes exclusive of it. This was relevant to a number of influential senior artists like Rasheed Araeen, Hassan Sharif and Roberto Chabet, but also to a younger generation of artists such as Ayesha Sultana or Indonesian artist Handiwirman Saputra.

Meera Menezes: What are some of the pulls and pressures that an exhibition such as the APT has to negotiate given that it is simultaneously also part of a public institution, the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA)?

Tarun Nagesh: I think this provides us with some great opportunities but may also impact the exhibition in different ways than stand-alone exhibitions. The APT is just one of the organisation's Asia-Pacific related projects and we regularly stage other exhibitions and programs focused on the region, as well as holding a significant collection, archive etc. All feed into the APT. Similarly, curating APT editions is part of ongoing work for the curators and other staff, so it can be looked at as an ongoing and continuous project in some sense, which sometimes gives us the ability to build on ideas between editions etc. Therein also now lies quite a long exhibition history, which is something that we continue to explore and think about in developing forthcoming projects.  APT is also an exhibition through which we acquire works for the Gallery's collection, which has grown into quite a diverse and strong one. This gives us the opportunity to commission major works we may not be able to secure otherwise, and we also have these to explore in other contexts and dialogues with other works. Curating exhibitions from this collection (outside of the APT) also often gives us an opportunity to test ideas and develop research that might feed into future APTs.

Nora Razian on the phantom limb, archaeology in reverse and our understanding of the human as a bounded subject that sits outside of ‘nature.’

Nora Razian is based between Beirut and Dubai and the Head of Exhibitions at Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai. Her recent exhibitions include 'I will return, and I will be millions' (2019) as part of Homeworks 8, Beirut Lebanon and ‘Phantom Limb’ (2019) at Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai  

Meera Menezes: How did you arrive at the title of the show Phantom Limb and think of linking this medical condition to our relationship with material heritage?

Nora Razian: The title Phantom Limb was inspired by the work of Kader Attia in the exhibition, the film ‘reflecting memory’ follows on the one hand sufferers of phantom limb syndrome, who are receiving therapy, and on the other interviews neurosurgeons, historians, musicians and other thinkers who reflect on the idea of collective trauma, collective repair, as well as the idea of the ‘phantom note’ in Dub music and others. I was interested in this idea on the one hand, of a visceral haunting in the present of something that was forcibly removed, as phantom limb syndrome presents itself after traumatic amputations, and the idea that the felt presence of something that is lost could so shape our contemporary experience of the world. On the other I was interested in this idea of the ‘void’ or the emptiness left by objects once they are extracted from their site of origin, and what new possibilities are offered around narrating histories through these voids.

Meera Menezes: As you note in your curatorial text, archaeology continues to be used as a politicized tool for producing historic ‘facts.’ How does the show Phantom Limb perform an “Archaeology in the reverse?”

Nora Razian: What I meant by an ‘archeology in reverse’ is that knowledge does not flow out from the object, as we traditionally think of how archeological knowledge works, but rather back through the infrastructures of its discovery, of its circulation and of its display, to make visible the networks that enabled its extraction and migration and have this the focus of the exhibition rather than focusing on the history of objects and sites themselves.

Meera Menezes: In your exhibition I will return and I will be millions how did the artists “de-stabilize socially constructed approaches to both the human body and those other-than-human bodies?” 

Nora Razian: In I will return and I will be millions I wanted to think about a genealogy between feminist practice, eco-feminist practice, and current thinking around multi-species or multi-being relationships, at the core of these practices is the drive to try and break away from, or if you like ‘queer’ our entrenched habits of relating to others as well as our understanding of the human as a bounded subject that sits outside of ‘nature’. So in Jenna Sutela’s work, we look at the notion that bacteria, the same bacteria that inhabits our gut, might have come from outer space, and the film thinks about our perceived ideas of colonization, and the notion of an ‘environment’ whether that be the laboriously sanitized space of the lab, outer space, or our gut, and how these might be related.  Mona Hatoum’s earlier work ‘Corps Etranger’ which came out of an earlier performance, is a visually alienating ride in and around a human body, through an endoscopic camera, something which is so familiar becomes a strange environment.  

Zoe Butt talks about the power of art and how empathy is at the core of the human condition.

Zoe Butt is a curator and writer based in Vietnam. Her curatorial practice centres on building critically thinking and historically conscious artistic communities as well as fostering dialogue among countries of the global south. Her project for the Sharjah Biennial 14 was titled “Journey beyond the Arrow.”

Meera Menezes: How did your project “Journey Beyond the Arrow” speak to the larger theme of the Sharjah Biennial 14, namely “Leaving the Echo Chamber”?

Zoe Butt: In popular culture the “Echo Chamber” is a moniker for circuitous news media and its attendant feeds that are reinforced by a closed system, a network that is controlled and governed by private sources, governments and corporations. It is also a metaphor for the historical dominance of Capital and the cultural, social and political systems which dictate its access, production and distribution – this ‘capital’ wooing (and thus privileging) particular image, language, skill, history and geography. Most tangibly, the ‘Echo Chamber’ is the space wherein sound hits and reverberates, where memory and imagination echo across surface, across space, and across time.

‘Leaving the Echo Chamber’ does not propose a “how” to “leave” this context, but rather seeks to put into conversation a series of provocations on how one might re-negotiate the shape, form and function of this chamber, towards a multiplying of the echoes within, such vibration is representative of the vast forms of human production — its rituals, beliefs and customs.

‘Journey Beyond the Arrow’ examined particular histories of cause and affect, focusing on the context of the bow that launches the arrow of time, and thus re-assessing our understanding of the ‘destination’ or ‘arrival’. Through examination of object and action, by artists predominantly speaking from a relation with our globalizing Souths, particular perspectives were presented that add a crucial echo to the chamber of knowledge of our past - thus emphasizing the need for plurality, flexibility and openness in the determination of human memory and its production. ‘Journey Beyond the Arrow’ elucidated what has always been a wonder for me—the power of art to take us on a journey beyond the official text books of Empire, to pathways of human interaction and thus learning, to spheres of differing experience that, in the end, should make us question the stories we are told today.

Meera Menezes: The Sharjah Biennial 14 consisted of three curatorial propositions. What were the points of intersection or overlap between your project and the two others and what strands are you interested in investigating further?

Zoe Butt: Questions of time and its shaping of potential (as curated by Omar Kholeif) resonates for example, with my preoccupation with empathy and the need to give time in the shaping of human cause and effect with its embrace (evidenced in such work by Lee Mingwei, 31st Century Museum of Contemporary Spirit and Nalini Malani); while the provocation of the senses as not privileging sight (as curated by Claire Tancons) resonates for example, with my preoccupation with music and the need to understand its history as critical reflections of social injustice and human migration (evidenced in the work of Neo Muyanga and my curation of my March Meet which relied on the mode of ’theatre’ as a site of artistic confession).

The role of empathy is an ongoing pre-occupation for me. I am particularly keen to explore how interdisciplinary thinkers and makers utilize the human senses in an effort to conjure re-connection with effects of trauma and the instrumentalization of violence. In today’s world I feel the realm of the visual has desensitized our moral and ethical responsibilities in social life, and my own study of human trauma and violence with artists in SB14 gave me immense inspiration to explore how culture may be better harnessed to tap the pool of empathy that I want to believe is at the core of the human condition.

Meera Menezes: Your upcoming project “Re-Aligning the Cosmos” aims at examining the “relationship between the spiritual identification with natural resources and the reality of its consumption.” What is the curatorial approach you have taken to realize it?

Zoe Butt: ‘Re-Aligning the Cosmos’ is yet to take place. We hope it will be launched in March 2020 (we are currently negotiating with hopeful collaborators and funders). The curatorial approach we hope to utilize is one of an interdisciplinary nature, acknowledging that the project likely will take place in Saigon but also rural areas where knowledge of contemporary art is thin. We thus have secured collaboration with the ‘Oxford Clinical Research Unit’ who have firsthand experience in engaging rural communities, through culture, towards a re-assessment of traditional practices of everyday life and the need to consider 21st Century dilemmas (eg. natural resource shortages; impact of chemical usage on crops; role of hygiene in sexual health etc). Our approach is collaboration (assisting the chosen artist with a critical approach to subject, cause and effect); our methods will be discursive (acknowledging the role of dialog as mode of building trust as a must when engaging differing human networks / acknowledging that public debate concerning the issues at hand are rarely discussed in Vietnam).

Anita Dube talks about the Biennale as a site of spectacle and the need to re-imagine the platform.

Anita Dube is a Delhi-based artist and was the curator of the 2018 Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB), India. As a member of Radical Painters and Sculptors Association, she wrote the manifesto of the seminal exhibition ‘Questions and Dialogue’ in 1987, and has since been producing critical, politically-driven artwork across media. In the KMB she explored how “the possibilities for a non-alienated life could spill into a politics of friendship.”

Meera Menezes: Biennales can easily turn into sites of spectacle. As the curator of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2018, you were acutely aware of this possibility and that a society of the spectacle was “fascism’s main ally.” What strategies did you employ to counter the seductive power of the spectacle in the Biennale?

Anita Dube: Thinking against the grain of the 'spectacle', especially at this fascist juncture in our history, I started to foreground things that are anathema to the muscularity inherent in it. So fragility, vulnerability, criticality within the non heroic voices of women, within traces of peasant consciousness connected to rurality and agriculture, within the politically and culturally marginalised, became my protagonists in witnessing and speaking.

I felt that the spectacle could be taken on by the eros within practices that engaged with community and also by splitting the Biennale into two parts: the exhibition and the discursive space of the 'Pavilion'. The latter allowing for a multiplicity of voices in conversation, lay and informed, as active participants.

Meera Menezes: The Kochi-Muziris Biennale is in a sense unique as its curator is also an artist. How did your own artistic practice and preoccupations feed into its staging?

Anita Dube: What I brought to KMB 2018 are probably qualities that are dear to me as an artist. A free flowing weave of ideas driven by a strong sense of materiality not only of the art work but also of the architecture that would host them. A belief that temperature ie. warmth, along with a visual language that partakes of populism help in reaching audiences with open arms. A disarming presence of the various rasas, as the best bet against the rhetorical bulldozer of the right wing. An intuitive method of seeing the connection between disparate thoughts and affects as also a provocative use of rupture to induce reflection.

Meera Menezes: You have spoken of the need to rethink the format of the Biennale. What are the limitations of the Biennale and how can one possibly re-imagine it?

Anita Dube: Having done KMB 2018, I feel disenchanted by the model. Approximately 100 artists for about 100 days in a gigantic financial and logistical exercise does not appear sustainable at all, especially in our context. The over dependence on Capital, whether of the State or Corporate, aligns it with neo-liberal ideology as also with Tourism. So whatever culturally radical gestures you may want to espouse, these become absorbed and easily replaceable within the larger narrative.

Just as we are thinking against big dams, we need to rethink the big Biennale model, towards micro sites of cultural action, embedded within localities. Where local communities, artists and activists would come together to create rupture and rapture!

One of the projects very dear to me in the Biennale was the Oorali express bus travelling along the coastline in Kerala to 10 different fishing villages in honour of the fishermen who had been instrumental in the rescue operations during the floods that devastated Kerala in June 2018. Their two day engagement in each village reached out to children via music and art workshops, hung out with fishermen listening to their troubles and stories of courage: all this culminating in a concert where the bus opened up to become the performing stage.

We need to think of a staggered series of micro events: an ongoing Biennale perhaps that lasts for the full two year duration; where one Biennale ends another can begin, as a viable cultural alternative to temples churches mosques and gurdwaras. Culture needs to play a vital role within the secular fabric as a critical response to our time.