Asian Art Today: Exploiting the Code

1 South Asia Journal for Culture Volume I Asian Art Today: Exploiing the Code A Criique from the Margins Jagath Weerasinghe Each generaion must out of relaive obscurity discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it (Fanon1991). This is an atempt at a criical reading of Asian modernist art of the last decade of the twenieth century and the first decade of this century. I refer paricularly to art that has been canonized as ‘good’ or ‘new’ art by art curators from the ‘developed world’ by way of numerous biennales, triennials, and art wriings on contemporary Asian art. Through these events and wriings, curators have been able to project, privilege and promote specific types of art and arists, thus idenifying and declaring for Asia their ‘major’ arists to be celebrated. My reading is made in relaion to these arists and some of their work that have been highly acclaimed by the enterprise of internaional art. The itle of this essay indicates that my focus of study includes the whole of Asia. I have considered extensively examples from both China and India in formulaing my observaions and arguments. However, I need to confess that the most familiar terrain for me is South Asia. Having said that, as demonstrated through the examples from China, the observaions I present here are not peculiar and limited to the South Asian terrain. The idea of looking criically at the global dynamics at play during the last two decades within the Asian art scene that triggered various issues and anxieies, and how Asian art has manifested in recent years had been a nagging desire for me for a long ime. However, every ime I felt the urge to comment on it, my precarious situaion as an art praciioner who has paricipated in a number of major biennials and triennials in the Asia Pacific region, and the fact that I am personally known to the arists who would be the object of study to develop my criique on contemporary Asian art has made me capricious and at the same ime anxious. As such, I would declare this exercise more as an atempt to define what we are doing as Asian arists or what we can do as arists in a world that is controlled and manipulated by globalized corporate capital. 2 South Asia Journal for Culture Volume I The Rise and Subversion of a New Era in Asian Art It is now a widely accepted fact that Asian art embarked upon a new era in the 1980s and in the early 1990s. The ideas and trends in art that gathered momentum during this period can be idenified as the emergence of a historical avant-garde in visual arts in Asia for several reasons.1 By the last decade of the twenieth century, modernist art in Asia was in a posiion to claim a history close to a century on its own terms. It was also during this very period that Asian arists began to show signs of an ‘ani-insituionalism’ posiioned within the history of art that challenged the insituionalized autonomy of the discipline at varying degrees and scales. There have been several curatorial and scholarly atempts to record and define this important development in Asian art.2 Survey exhibiions such as ‘New Art from South Asia 1992’ organized by the Japan Foundaion, the ‘Asian Art Shows’ of the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum and scholarly book projects such as Tradiion and Change edited by Caroline Turner, published in 1994 coinciding with the first Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art of Queensland Galleries, are some examples of such atempts. The new work that came into prominence in these years established new ideologies that fuelled a different narraive urge which propounded a counter-tradiion to the accepted norms of modernism, and the universalizing wishes of modernist art. These works interrogated and explored the social and cultural codes as well as the poliical affiliaions of those very codes that consituted the ideologies of control, dominaion and exploitaion. Always containing a certain cultural specificity in terms of the problemaic, the themaic and the texuality, these works with their post-modernist criical edge had a local ‘aura’ around them. In other words, the Asian anxieies stemming from histories of colonial dominaion, independence struggles, contemporary dilemmas of ethnic issues, violence, poliical chaos and cultural confrontaions in the face of global intrusions tended to inform the themaic core of most of these works. The Asian arists conspicuously predicated upon the narraive textualiies of the contexts which they then examined, explored or reflected upon in the art works. While it was the arists from Asian countries who brought in the new era, it was not they who defined and managed the new era into the future. In the absence of a serious criical discourse in contemporary art that would have consolidated the new movement, the direcional guidance for contemporary Asian art was set by the art curators from the developed world, funded by wealthy museums and galleries. It is important to note that the Asian art world had no intra- or inter-regional insituional connecions of any significance unil the 1990s. Sri Lankan arists were totally oblivious to the changes that were occurring in India or China, while Pakistani women arists did not exist for them unil as late as early 2000. It was via internaional curators, exhibiions and art aciviies curated by them that Asian arists from different regions met each other and arists’ networks were established. Through a process of acknowledgement, recogniion and presening with opportuniies to show Asian art in internaional exhibiions, internaional art curators played a pivotal role in consolidaing the radical developments in art in Asia during the 1980s and 1990s. In retrospect, this seems inevitable as the dawning of a new era in Asian art coincided with the dawning of another era. The 1990s marked the beginning of an era of curators. The art curators of contemporary art who emerged in the 1990s were guided by several perceived duies. If earlier curators were ‘behind the scene aestheic arbiters,’ the new curators became the cultural mediators between the transnaional and local. They saw themselves as 3 South Asia Journal for Culture Volume I mediators between arists, art audiences and art funders. Moreover, they took it as their prerogaive to present this art within and beyond the region. This phenomenon worked well for the rapid internaionalizaion of Asian art by way of biennales, triennials, art camps and traveling exhibiions. However, there was an unavoidable drawback in this endeavor of internaionalizing Asian art by curators: it took place for the benefit of art audiences in developed countries where the curators performed their work, and to support the glorificaion of wealthy art museums in those countries. To quote Michel Brenson, “what needs to be stated is that the increasing insituional awareness of the importance of audiences has made curator more visible as mediator between art and its public” (Brenson 1998: 16-27). What this meant in pracice was that the curators had to ensure impressive numbers of visitors to museum events so that corporate money spent on museums was jusified and assured. To make sure that art audiences came to museums, the curators were forced to look for art that had potenial to speak to, or amuse art audiences of the developed world. Accordingly it became apparent, although never ariculated as such, that the art works finding their way into the hallowed exhibiion spaces of contemporary art museums in the developed world could not be too culturally specific, and had a comfortable distance from its viewers. Asian art should enthrall the viewer but not perturb them with too much of overloaded details. The unpublicized atribute inherently possessed by these chosen Asian artworks acknowledged by the museums was the high potenial of readability with an edge towards ‘strangeness’. If one were to take a criical look at the arists and the artworks that have acquired major accolades as great Asian arists and innovaive Asian art, what one sees is a situaion exceedingly dominated by the hegemonic cultural values and wishes of the so called ‘west’, the colonial and the developed (in most cases these are one and the same). The criical edge in Asian art that quesioned and explored cultural codes of dominaion and power in their widest sense in the 1980s and early 1990s, has by now given way to passive and reified representaions or narraives of Asian anxieies and histories. Asian anxieies are well packaged in digital manipulaions, in exoic and crat techniques, in everyday objects and in the biographies of now non-threatening Asian villains such as Mahathma Gandhi and Mao Setung. What is seen now are the products (art) thus packaged, totally relying for their meaning and value upon their packaging; strikingly similar to the packaging of junk food. Here, the art audiences of the developed world are assured of enrichment of their lives through the consumpion of some Asian ‘cultural nutrients’ while the museums and shows of contemporary Asian art are designated as places for this cultural enrichment. If one were to take a broad look at contemporary Asian art shown at internaional exhibiions and reproduced in art journals and other internaional publicaions, one would see that they can be divided into two main trends: 1. The first trend represents art works that present narraives of Asian anxieies, tradiions and histories of violence and suffering in a way that is highly miigated, saniized and made palatable to an internaional audience and corporate culture. Most of these artworks deliberately conceal the social and poliical affiliaions of the cultural codes and specificiies that inform their work and can be labeled as exploiing the cultural codes. My major criique of the works within this trend is that they coninue to succumb to the hegemonic myth of ‘modernist’ art and its Volume I South Asia Journal for Culture 4 extensions, and are totally the prerogaive of the so called ‘west’. By doing this, such works automaically endorse the precondiion of a ‘good’ work of art to be the ‘easy accessibility and translatability’ to the ‘western’ audiences. Like golden beaches of Sri Lanka or India that are kept ‘saniized’ for the enjoyment of Euro-American tourists, our art should be cleansed of any direct links with the culturally specific signs that are inherent to the anxieies examined and explored, so that such informaion wouldn’t bother the audiences of the developed world. 2. The second trend contains artworks that became objects of ‘great’ art by the mere transportaion of tradiional or early twenieth century materials, objects and situaions which consitute narraives that conform to the noions of the ‘Orient,’ to the clinically spotless gallery environment of wealthy museums. Such exportaions of Asian situaions shamelessly cater to an age old western hunger for ‘anthropologizing’ the Asian world and experience. The main problem of this trend is that it gives no reckoning to the agency of Asian arists in representaion. In both trends, one sees that Asian arists work more as ‘cultural contractors’ for art audiences of the developed world than as arists who ‘interject a subjecivity that is existenially pitched’ (Kapur 2000: 314). As such, these works contain no moving or criical interiors; interiors which demand an understanding of the cultural specificiies of art making. Instead, they only remain within an exterior constructed by exploiing the cultural codes that comprise Asian anxieies, which by implicaion resemble fantasies fabricated with Asian ‘narraives’ for a global audience necessarily from the ‘western’ and developed world. In this sense, these art works are very much like the global literature formulated by Asian novelists that excel by making ‘cartoonish’ realiies of Asian anxieies and histories (Mishra 2007: 16). Looking at Asian mega art stars and the high profile art events of the Asia-Pacific region from a vantage point that has been only marginally associated with the major circuits of such events, we seem to be in an advantageous posiion to be more criical of the art today. Our predicament of not being lured by the glamour of the art world was not due to any special virtue on our part, but a privilege of being in the margins. We find that it is imperaive for Asian arists to re-evaluate the poliics and workings of Asian art at present, and to be aware of its shortcomings. In many ways these shortcomings deprive us of our agency and capacity to be discursive, with the resuling danger of distancing us from our own socieies. Alternaively, are we to conclude that the great revolt in the visual arts in the last two decades of the twenieth century in Asia have now been tamed and remodeled in the way the ‘superior other’ wants us to present us to him? In the introducion to her edited volume, Art and Social Change: Contemporary Art in Asia and the Pacific (an essenial text in understanding Asian art), Caroline Turner states that “what Said calls the authority of the compelling image of empire overtaking so many procedures of intellectual mastery has been let behind in the new socieies of the Asia-Pacific region” (Turner 2005). Sadly, this may not hold true any more as such liberaing processes, or the reflecions of an independent art force in relaion to Asia has become another utopian myth. If such an effort were made, it was for a very brief ime in the early 1990s; it now remains an unrealized dream uprooted by the Asian arists themselves within the dynamics of internaionalism. Arists as Cultural Contractors 5 South Asia Journal for Culture Volume I Having stated my anxieies and criical thoughts forthrightly and somewhat unmercifully, I would now like to quesion my own hesitaion with the idea of arists in the role of ‘cultural contractors’. What are the implicaions for arists in thinking and working in such a role? Without formulaing a direct answer to this, I would like to approach the problem from a different perspecive that leaves the quesion unanswered to a certain extent. Art historians and their wriings have repeatedly emphasized that the primary funcion of the pre-modern era art was to service aestheic desires and social needs of the wealthy and the powerful. Therefore, for the purpose of my argument, I hold that even arists under feudal condiions of the pre-modern era played the role of ‘cultural contractors’ in actuality. However, the difference of the pre-modern era was that the arists were not required to have, nor were obsessed with, the noion of unique and original style. At the same ime, pre-modern arists were not required to be self consciously intervenionist and criical. Even then, when such traits in their arisic personaliies and their works existed, those were hidden under several layers of meaning-making. Since I imply that contemporary arists have again assumed the role of ‘cultural contractors,’ are we to conclude that modernist art has exhausted itself and come full circle? Is it making one of the basic tenants of modernist art -- arist as a selfreflecive and quesioning individual -- untenable and irrelevant? Perhaps this is the hidden agenda of corporate capital of the transnaional era. The re-phrasing of arists as ‘cultural contractors’ is not only an Asian phenomena that occurred under the tutelage of internaional art curators. It has its European counterparts as well, even though its manifestaion is not as blatant. The Young Briish Arist (YBA) phenomenon of the 1990s in the UK is perhaps the best European example of such a manifestaion. Some works and arists of this movement can easily be placed under the label of ‘cultural contractors’. At this moment, it is useful to reflect and understand fully the atributes of a ‘cultural contractor’. A ‘cultural contractor’, I would suggest, self-consciously thinks in terms of power and wealth of the class owning the means of producion of values /assets. Therefore, the possibiliies of thinking and conceptualizing a certain narraive in terms of visual art may essenially be predetermined by the power and wealth of the class that owns the means of producion of values /assets. Certain works by Damien Hirst and Marc Quinn can be taken to illustrate this aspect of the psychology of ‘arist turned cultural contractors’. Hirst’s work with dead animals in formaldehyde not only insists on confroning us with the brute fact of mortality at every turn, but the power of corporate capitalism confronts us with perhaps a greater force. Quinn’s self portrait cast in blood also subscribes to this quite comfortably. If not for the patronage of corporate capital, conceiving of an artwork such as Quinn’s, that needs an endless amount of financial support for its sustenance and funcion as an artwork, would not be possible. One obvious aspect of such artworks is that they radiate with a kind of snobbish arrogance by foregrounding the fact that they need a ‘lot of cash’ for their existence. Similar to rituals of feudal socieies, these artworks need the direct support of the owners of wealth to be conceived, produced and presented. An extreme example of such an artwork that best illustrates the mindset of an ‘arist turned cultural worker’ is Hirst’s recent work of a jewel studded human skull. Cosing a staggering fiteen million pounds as reported by CNN, the work was exhibited to a few at a ime for only several minutes under heavy security. The whole scenario surrounding this work is interesing because of its similarity to the atmosphere and aura of visiing a sacred chamber. Has Hirst given rise to a very sacred object? The steps that a viewer were required to go through to see the art work, such as Volume I South Asia Journal for Culture 6 staying in line, being security checked, walking through several doors, seeing the object only for a few minutes, resembles nothing but entering the sanctum sanctorum of a temple or a shrine. This opens to us a series of very interesing quesions. Whose ‘temple’ are we stepping into? Whom are we worshiping? Who is blessed by this temple? One last quesion looms large: how has Hirst claimed the privilege to imagine making an artwork that would cost him fiteen million pounds? If one were to look at all the answers closely, one cannot avoid the larger than life figure of corporate capital. The high temples of corporate capital play the role of blessing arists such as Hirst to boost their power to ‘imagine big.’ What Hirst in reality has ended up producing is a ‘disneyified’3 ritual object and a corresponding series of ritual pracices (similar to the feudal rituals of pre-modern imes), to sancify the accumulaion of wealth on the one hand, and to camouflage the processes of exploitaion that makes it possible to amass such excessive wealth through pseudo sancificaion. Reformulaing arists as ‘cultural contractors’ seems to be a necessary requirement of transnaional corporate capital. If Asian arists and art curators have succumbed to this by ‘saniizing’ and ‘disneyfiying’ Asian anxieies, histories, sufferings and materials, the European arists have collaborated with it by ‘ritualizing’ and ‘disneyfing’ corporate wealth. The difference between Asian and European art, or to be more specific, between the art of the developed world and the developing, is that the former saniizes its narraive while the later ritualizes. The main problem however, in casing arists as ‘cultural contractors’ is that it robs art of one of its hard won post–tradiionalist truths- the possibility to be an ‘arist’. I began this essay with a quotaion from Frantz Fannon as I believe that a great revoluion in visual art occurred in Asia in the 1980s and 1990s which was forgoten, betrayed or not considered seriously by mid 2000 by current Asian mega art personaliies and art writers. The ruptures made by arists like K. G. Subramanium, and Gulammohamed Sheik for India that were further consolidated by arists like Bhupan Khaker, Nalini Malani, Nilma Sheik, Arpita Singh, Vivan Sundaram, Madhvi Parekh and a few others are now betrayed by many of the current superstars of Indian art by having taken a path of ‘exploiing the code’ rather than exploring and examining the code.4 The same can be said of Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal to a certain degree. A criical retake on the current status of Asian art seems imperaive if we are to write our history on our own terms. End Notes 1. A discerning reader may noice that my ideas on historical avant-garde stem from Peter Burger’s book Theory of the Avant-Garde (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1984). 2. Surprisingly, for an eminent Indian art writer like Geetha Kapur even as late as 2005 there were no arists or art worthy of her atenion outside of Delhi-Bombay-Baroda circuit in South Asia. What exists for her between this Indian circuit of ‘excellence’ and East Asia is a culturally barren landscape. For her, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal or Sri Lanka does not exist as acive paricipants of an Asian art scene, but India alone on one side and East Asia on the other! For more details, see Geeta Kapur, ‘Dismantled Norms: Apropose other Avant-gardes’ (In, Caroline Turner, Ed., Art and Social Change, Canberra: Pandanus Books, 2005: 46-100). What is ironical in this essay concerning other avant-gardes is that Kapur, while riding on Hal Foster’s posiion that argues for successive avant-gardes -- claims 7 South Asia Journal for Culture Volume I that “avant-garde is historically condiioned phenomenon which emerges only in a moment of real poliical disjuncture, (and) it will appear in various forms in different parts of the world at different imes” (2005: 57), and fails or avoids looking around South Asia for similar movements. However, she seems quite versaile on Thai, Philippine, Indonesian and Chinese art and arists. Kapur’s complete disregard for art movements in South Asia other than the Delhi-Bombay-Baroda circuit destabilizes the poliics of her arguments that intend to confront the hegemony of the Euro-American art and art history wriing pracices. This complete disregard for, and silence on, the art movements in South Asia implies a hegemonic posiion for India in relaion to South Asia, and she as a ‘producer of knowledge’ casts herself a colonialist of a kind. 3. ‘Disneyficaion’ is a word coined to infer situaions that resembles the fabricated fantasies of Disneyland. 4. For more informaion, see Geeta Kapur’s essay, ‘When was Modernism in Indian Art?’ (In, When was Modernism. New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2000). This essay by Geeta Kapur can be considered an important piece of wriing though writen in the convoluted language of the subaltern studies specialists. It contains a whole range of extremely penetraing insights on modernism/ postmodernism in art in South Asia. Perhaps it may be due to this extremely arrogant, dis-communicaive and eliist use of language of the white master that most Indian arists and art curators have not been able to internalize the very crucial and perinent issues that she has raised in this essay. Bibliography Brenson, Micheal. 1998. "The Curator’s Movement," Art Journal, Vol. 57, No 4, Winter. Burger, Peter. 1984. Theory of the Avant-Garde, University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis. Turner, Caroline (ed.). 2005. Art and Social Change: Contemporary Art in Asia and the Pacific. Canberra: Pandanus Books. Fanon, F. 1991. The Wretched of the Earth Kapur, Geeta. 2000. 'When was modernism in Indian art?' In, When was Modernism, Tulika Books: New Delhi. Kapur, Geeta. 2005. 'Dismantled Norms: Apropose other Avant-gardes.' In, Turner, Caroline Ed., Art and Social Change, Canberra: Pandanus Books. Mishra, Pankaj. 2007. 'Winternachten Lecture 2007: The globalizaion of literature.' The making of an illusion, Internaional Literature Fesival, The Hague.