Cloak & Dagger: India’s Fictional Times
Contemporary Indian art exhibition, Zuzeum Art Centre, Riga
Cloak and Dagger: India’s Fictional Times (on view at the Zuzeum Art Centre in Riga until November 21) showcases contemporary painting, sculpture and graphic art from the Zuzāns Collection. The purpose of this exhibition is to offer the viewer a focused lens through which to engage with the vast array of works, frameworks and disciplines present in modern and contemporary art from India.
The exhibition has been curated by Shaheen Merali, a curator and writer based in London who explores the intersection of art, cultural identity and global histories. Merali states: “The exhibition Cloak & Dagger was always about the place of the hidden, from which there is the ability to react. [...] Cloak & Dagger is part of the warped political culture, and the manner in which the institutions are morphing, like the Covid variants, by malicious forms of address and erasure to create the current state of cruelty that collectively afflicts the general population.”
Spring, 2021. Concrete, metal, wood, artificial flowers / Debesh Goswami, b. 1965, Kolkata, West Bengal, India / Lives and works in Paris and Rennes, France, and Kolkata, West Bengal, India / © Māris Lapiņš, Zuzeum
The exhibition features 57 works from the Zuzāns Collection, two films by Natasha de Betak, and a site-specific installation, Spring, by Paris-based artist Debesh Gosvami, which is on exhibit in the open-air sculpture garden.
Arterritory.com presents the following Q&A with the exhibition’s curator, Shaheen Merali, and Ieva Zībārte, Head of Exhibitions at the Zuzeum Art Centre.
How did the idea of organising an Indian art exhibition at the Zuzeum Art Centre come about? Why did you decide to do the show at specifically this point in time?
Shaheen Merali: The exhibition originated with an invitation from my colleagues at the Zuzeum Art Centre after the works in the exhibition had already been purchased. I researched the works and curated them into sections. These categories are theoretical yet allow for a visualisation for exhibition-making and design. I also managed to add two new inclusions, the online screenings and film projection by Natasha de Betak, as well as the commission of a new sculpture by Debesh Goswami for the courtyard. The exhibition came about from the desire to expand the knowledge and scope of the collection in addition to creating a cultural relationship with both the local and greater (global) communities.
Exhibition “Cloak and Dagger. India's fictional times ”at the Zuzeum Art Centre, 2021. © Māris Lapiņš, Zuzeum
Ieva Zībārte: This exhibition is a response to the global coronavirus pandemic. We had to rework the whole programme of the inaugural year at Zuzeum, as it became clear right at the beginning that the international movement of art practitioners and artworks will be restricted. At that time we didn't know what a Zoom meeting was. Surely, creatives have always known how to work at different locations via the internet, but this was a different kind of situation.
One of the aims of the Zuzeum is to provide public access to the growing Zuzāns Collection, yet the most important part of the collection – 20th-century Latvian art – is well known here as it has been actively loaned to art institutions across the region. Acknowledging the fact that our visitors for the foreseeable future would be mostly local, and seeing how the recently purchased artworks created by Thomas Houseago and Antony Gormley are being installed and integrated into the Zuzeum’s architecture, I proposed to continue the introduction of our latest acquisitions indoors. The first show was an assortment of artworks introducing the centre’s new international direction.
Exhibition “Cloak and Dagger. India's fictional times ”at the Zuzeum Art Centre, 2021. © Māris Lapiņš, Zuzeum
The idea behind the Zuzeum is to provide a safe, multifunctional and inspiring public space for all, regardless of their self-identities or cultural or socioeconomic background. Cloak and Dagger is the second exhibition of our inaugural year showcasing contemporary painting, sculpture and graphic art from India. It is a part of the Zuzāns Collection that no one knows about. The programme is quite pragmatic, but that doesn’t mean we don't have an artistic concept. We do, and it is has been made around the space itself: a historical building that was once a cork factory in a marginal, former working-class neighbourhood but that is now a new public space. For the second exhibition we invited Shaheen Merali to develop the narrative, and once again we collaborated with architect, urbanist and designer Evelīna Ozola to adapt this narrative for our unique space.
The title of the exhibition is Cloak and Dagger. India’s fictional times. What is the main message behind it? What are you trying to say by using these very poetic, but at the same time archaic, symbols? As we know, princes and nobles were often portrayed wearing a dagger (katar) at their side. It is a very masculine symbol and somehow emphasises the gender disparities still present in India (as well as in its art scene).
S.M.: The exhibition Cloak & Dagger was always about the place of the hidden, from which there is the ability to react. This metaphor provides an important way to engage with cultural signs about this place of emergency, this emerging circuitous desperation, the spiralling dimensions of India’s second wave of Covid peaking. Its capital, New Delhi, was ravaged and facing an oxygen emergency. Images of mass cremations have come to represent an inevitable dystopia. Cloak & Dagger is part of the warped political culture and the manner in which the institutions are morphing, like the Covid variants, by malicious forms of address and erasure to create the current state of cruelty that collectively afflicts the general population. In terms of gender, yes, of course there is a persistent contemporary and historic violence on Indian subjects – their bodies, its lanes, its universities and its holy spaces are all somehow compromised and increasingly so.
Untitled I, 2010–2012. Watercolour on rice paper on canvas / Siji Krishnan, b. 1983, Mavelikkara, Kerala, India / Lives and works in Kochi, Kerala, India / © Jānis Pipars, Zuzāns collection
I.Z.: The title is relevant to the times we are living in. When the curator suggested it, we immediately felt connected. Having lived behind the Iron Curtain, we know what a cloak-and-dagger situation is. One must always wear a cloak and carry a dagger as a survival strategy. I see it as a filter that either makes things beautiful or hides imperfections – from the innocent to the purposefully sinister.
India is called “the land of the seven rivers” and its image is multi-layered and thick, but there are a few, perhaps stereotypical, aspects that dominate: colours, smells, light, sounds, spirituality, overpopulation, extreme poverty and unbelievable wealth, a mix of religions (Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Christians), etc. The vibe of India is very special and cannot be confused with anything else, especially by those who have been to India at least once. How important for you is the presence of this vibe at the exhibition, or quite the opposite – did you want to avoid it?
S.M.: This vibe, as you call it, is actually a recent interlocution, perhaps one that commands so much attention due to the rise of the commodification of Indian spirituality in the western regions in the post-world-war period. It is not a vibe as such in India itself; it is a long, cohesive tradition that, like a river, runs throughout the nation’s multiculturality, multi-religiosity, and its disparities in wealth and education. In the essay for the catalogue, I suggested that the vast scope of India reveals “that these terms and their histories are in contradictory (at times collapsed) relations, which echo across different facets of contemporary culture and politics.” Of course, the vibe you suggest and contemporary culture after globalisation are further entangled in the way images of countries, nations and its citizens are formed. Its values are squeezed into formats such as comedies, documentaries or films as well as into articles, publications, and on the internet. One cannot avoid the vibe; it is often all-pervasive, and the audience brings with them a finely tuned idea of what they think they know and what they hope they will find about what they want to know – so it travels along with the viewer. This includes my own vision and idea of India.
Denotified Land, 2019. Ink and watercolour on paper / Anupam Roy, b. 1985, Ashoknagar Kalyangarh, West Bengal, India / Lives and works in New Delhi, India / © Jānis Pipars, Zuzāns collection
I.Z.: We have all of these references in the exhibition, yet one should not expect splashes of colour and an extravaganza of shapes. The art, as well as the exhibition’s design, is subtle. At times it whispers. One might say it is traditional. There is a lot of watercolour and art on paper in general. We see printmaking still being strong in India. The surprise moment is how boldly artists express themselves in, for example, woodcut and on something as fragile as paper. We have large-scale artworks on paper by Anupam Roy, Priti Vadakkath, Prathap Modi and Zakkir Hussain – this is where I see the boldness of “the festival mind”. A lot of artists address the subject of lands and territories taken away from people and nature. There are also messages that Shaheen Merali explains in his essay that will be available to read later this summer, when a book with the same title as the exhibition comes out. Hopefully this will also be when we see the green passports activated and international travel resumed.
About. Face III, 2014. Charcoal and dry pastel on Arches paper / Priti Vadakkath, b. 1971, Kochi, Kerala, India / Lives and works in Kochi, Kerala, India / © Jānis Pipars, Zuzeum
Storytelling, as well as many currents and undercurrents of symbolism, have always been present in Indian art and culture, but foreigners are not always able to read them. What are some of the background stories of this exhibition that would be useful for a viewer to know?
S.M.: I think it is important to acknowledge that these sets of works were collected in a manner that was selective as well as erratic – it is an interesting way to collect. The subcontinent of India is vast, beyond comprehension. It requires you to start from where you find yourself and what appears before you. As such, this collection follows in the tradition of deciphering, discovering from a network that starts to unravel. There are some very important and interesting works in the collection. Furthermore, the way it has been brought together has undermined a conscious narrative. The erratic is actually a gift, for what one finds in the selection are works by a number of younger artists, many unknown outside of the limited flows of the Indian art world. So, it was inspiring not to have to work with material that is already canonised and can currently be found in the art world and its markets.
Amma Veedu, 2019. Oil on canvas / Ratheesh T., b. 1980, Kilimanoor, Kerala, India / Lives and works in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India / © Jānis Pipars, Zuzāns collection
In addition, I wrote a second curatorial statement, as at the time of the curation India was imploding from the pandemic and I felt the necessity to state the following: “Many of the works in this exhibition were made at a time of heightened awareness by artists forced to cope with an even more precarious state of political agitation. As a community, Indian towns and cities – even the country, the whole sub-continent – have shared a vision of the condition of Indian-ness, which has become an endangered existence. Imposed divisions have attacked the communal condition and divided its people into those who have too much and those who rely on a daily wage. Resources and wealth have become the property of the very few, with dramatic differences that have repercussions throughout Indian society.” In many ways the works in the exhibition do address this dialogical need to open up the debate through what I call a “a visual nervousness”, wherein the oppressive present, in which many artists have had to operate, has had a genuine effect on how best to guard one’s life and remain courageous in contemplating one’s place as an Indian and that of India globally.
Exhibition “Cloak and Dagger. India's fictional times ”at the Zuzeum Art Centre, 2021. © Māris Lapiņš, Zuzeum
I.Z.: I mentioned the book in which we have two essays that provide the context from the curator's perspective. In four parts – titled The Fold, The Circle, The Twist and The Turn – Shaheen Merali explains the dynamics of relationship between artists and contemporary India. In the second essay, Narendra Pachkhede gives a more detailed overview about the current state of affairs in art education and what it means to be an artist in India. He says that one of the contemporary terminologies commonly used by artists today is “strategy”. This again is something we all can relate to.
In 2008, at the time of the opening of the Indian art exhibition in Berlin, you, Shaheen, said that the contemporary Indian art scene has recently been absolutely brilliant. More than ten years have passed since. Would you still say the same? What is the most important aspect of today’s Indian art scene?
S.M.: No, I would not. What is happening at this moment can be described as a postcolonial cognitive dissonance, one that is articulated by structural changes and the formidable injustice that the Indian art scene, its film sector, and its intellectual community are able to ward off. It has made what James Baldwin suggested: “I am what time and history has made of me”. It is a matter of defeating chaos by crossing to a place of safety without an affinity with those who have selected inequities of religious domination, caste and gender. The Indian curator and art historian, Naman Ahuja [Pitts River Museum, Zoom conference on 20/5/21] has called the current state of cultural praxis as suffering from “performance anxiety” in which the “pandemic and precarity have introduced an interdependence”.
Untitled, 2012. Oil on canvas / Amshu Chukki, b. 1991, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India / Lives and works in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India / © Jānis Pipars, Zuzāns collection
What remains important are the powerful voices that remain important and pivotal to protect the futurity and its narratives, although many are literally besieged, hounded online, and some have been imprisoned and some, unfortunately, also assassinated. On June 13, 2021, Arundhati Roy wrote the following short poem:
Bury the BJP in a shallow grave
Say no prayers
Just
Goodbye
In many ways it is apt, an epitaph to the rise of the hyper-national.
I.Z.: With this exhibition we would like to raise the profile of many wonderful artists working in India. Having worked in the field of architecture for many years, I pay attention to the questions of the circular economy, co-production, waste, and land and energy use. I immediately noticed that artists from India think about these subjects more than artists in our region. It could be a painting depicting a building site, it could be an artwork based on observations of an urban or agrarian landscape – local, often marginalised communities. We also have some hands-on examples of how waste can be turned into art, be it Sakshi Gupta, a wonderful artist who works with scrap steel, or Manish Nai, whose conceptual wall-art pieces and sculptures are made from leftovers of the textile industry. Shaheen Merali based his narrative on how artists respond to current political affairs, whereas my interest was how artists relate to the living environment.
Exhibition “Cloak and Dagger. India's fictional times ”at the Zuzeum Art Centre, 2021. © Māris Lapiņš, Zuzeum
30 works by Indian artists are currently on view at the Zuzeum Art Centre. As a whole, is this exhibit able to give the viewer an insight into the current trends and manifestations of Indian contemporary art?
S.M.: I think the artistic community in India must be at least one- to five-million strong – that includes both traditional and contemporary makers and thinkers. It would be scary to think that such a large community can truly be represented by any one exhibition, or that one exhibition could tell all of the multiple narratives. This is a smaller set of work – the curatorial and conceptual framework here is based on human intelligence, of how and why data and information have become part of our imagination, the role of hostilities and surviving or adapting emotionally, and the endless possibilities in what we commemorate and what we don’t.
Although the collection is predominantly made up of paintings, there is a great amount of experiments and interdisciplinary judgements in reformulating the subjects and memory.
Exhibition “Cloak and Dagger. India's fictional times ”at the Zuzeum Art Centre, 2021. © Māris Lapiņš, Zuzeum
I.Z.: My first encounter with contemporary art from India was in London in 2001, when as a young architecture journalist I attended the Century City show at the newly opened Tate Modern. The chronologically latest and also most contemporary part of it was titled Bombay/Mumbai, which offered reflections of modern urban life in India as influenced by politics, identity, class division, and the anthropology of the street. Twenty years later, none of it has lost its significance. Another encounter I want to mention is the time I spent wandering around the territory of the Sir JJ School of Art in Mumbai. It is an architecturally interesting space in the city centre with a distinctive atmosphere. I believe that the physicality of space can help one understand art. The Kochi-Muziris Biennale is also wonderfully organised in relation to the architecture and topography of Fort Kochi and Ernakulam. The relationship between the remains of colonial planning and architecture and contemporary art provides an unforgettable experience. Our show follows a similar thinking and, yes, it offers good insight into contemporary art from India.
Unresolved story, 2004. Oil on canvas / T.V. Santhosh, b. 1968, Thrissur, Kerala, India / Lives and works in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India / © Jānis Pipars, Zuzāns collection
Craft is a very important aspect of Indian culture, and of contemporary art as well – it's still there. Could one say that through craft, Indian art becomes more personal and more energetically charged?
S.M.: As I answered above, some of the paintings are actually ‘crafted’; as such, they bring the skills associated with the craft tradition – the ability to manipulate materials but also to reformulate space and enquiry. It is the shape of their journey.
I.Z.: The Japanese love Scandinavian handicraft, as the traditional practices of both cultures have a lot in common. In a similar way, it is easy to link our own love of handmade things and artisanal skills with craft-making in India. With this question being asked, I look for an answer in our exhibition’s design and its central element – the circle of indigo-dyed cotton ropes. Although intended as a partition wall, it can also be seen as a site-specific installation charged with the personal energy of its makers.
Exhibition “Cloak and Dagger. India's fictional times ”at the Zuzeum Art Centre, 2021. © Māris Lapiņš, Zuzeum
At the beginning of April this year, Salman Rushdie, one of the most important and well-known writers of Indian origin, said: “I hate to say it, but I think things are worse than they used to be”. Do you agree with him, and does this exhibition demonstrate either a kind of approval or rejection of this statement?
S.M.: Salman Rushdie has always been a controversial figure, someone I have known as a writer and a Londoner since the early 1980s. Of course his assertion is correct, things are worse: we have a megalomaniac leadership, not only in India but in many nations in the world. Cloak and dagger. India’s fictional times open the story and the contextual shifting of forms, in both an artistic and documentary sense.
I.Z.: Things are bad, and they have always been bad. I do not remember things being good. These are brief moments of goodness we experience during our life. We should keep that in mind and believe in progress. I have two daughters and I see their lives being better than the ones my sister and I had. At the same time, my sister and I have had a far better life than our mother did. Both my grandmothers have been part of larger tragedies. With all the bad around, life still is good. I do not know how we could do this exhibition if I could not reach out via Instagram to the artists, all of whom would answer back almost immediately. Life is advanced now; the internet doesn’t have the borders we have on the ground. The exhibition is full of ideas and opinions about the order of things right now. It is our responsibility to contribute to goodness.
Commemoration, 2018. Wood, porcelain, dentures, bronze / Prajjwal Choudhury, b. 1980, Durgapur, West Bengal, India / Lives and works in Vadodara, Gujarat, India / © Jānis Pipars, Zuzāns collection
Does the exhibition embody your personal reflections/feelings of India? Is it the India you know and are familiar with?
S.M.: It is not necessarily the India I want to know, yet I do know this – it is a paradoxical twist that one returns to having to qualify one’s “homeland” in such a record. We all have relationships to belonging, to an imagined space that we would love to preserve, yet we need also to come to terms with the vulgarity that we are all facing in treating the planet and its resources like a disposable entity. The intolerance of minorities anywhere has to be called out, the invented history of an Indian past has to be stopped, and re-invention of pre-modern history should not be tolerated.
About Sign and Language: The Time Has Come to Talk I, 2012. Mixed media on Arches paper / Nalini Malani, b. 1946, Karachi / Lives and works in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India / © Jānis Pipars, Zuzāns collection
I.Z.: I feel connected to the female artists in our show. Many of them work in black and white or in greyscale materials. I keep thinking why. Many are mothers, and I know how life is still different for artists who are mothers. Even with all the childcare available here, every female artist or art practitioner – or a female of any profession, for that matter – knows what I am talking about. Art, your creative practice, and your work will always have to wait and suffer a bit. I have many personal connections when I look at art from India. I have never been a tourist in India – I try to live in India every time I go. I prefer rooms with no air conditioning. I am sentimental about this show, but these sentiments have not affected the show. We followed the narrative of Shaheen, and created a strong connection to the space. The exhibition is architectural: we have used tin, cotton ropes and regular shapes. I believe in the spiritual power of order. Every artwork should find its best place within the space
Are there any specific books you would recommend people read (or films they should watch) before visiting the exhibition?
S.M.: Available online:
Reports by citizens’ tribunals and fact-finding teams:
Majoritarian State: How Hindu Nationalism is Changing India. Edited by Angana P. Chatterji and Thomas Blom Hansen and Christophe Jaffrelot
Documentary films:
Final Solution (2003) by Rakesh Sharma.
Ram ke Naam (In the Name of God) (1992) by Anand Patwardhan.
I.Z.: The weather was dreadful while we were making the show, so I watched a lot of Netflix. The White Tiger is something I would recommend to watch, as well as Bombay Begums. There you will find many answers, including why we have mosquito nets in our show and why there are not many bodies visible in the artworks – only the traces someone has left in an empty cafe, a building site, or their bed. I also listen to Indian hip-hop. Pop culture is a constant source of inspiration for me. I balance it out with being in nature or studying the layout of an old temple.
