Various Venices, varying venues

A street urchin from Lahore or a beggar in a shopping area might never have imagined that they could leave their little world for another city in Pakistan, let alone travel outside the country or continent. But some of them managed to reach a faraway land: Europe – Italy – Venice.

This migration was made possible 5 May 2015 onwards, when a section of Rashid Rana’s work from the Venice Biennale was installed in the middle of Liberty Market in Lahore. Part of My East is Your West – the Collateral project organized by the Gujral Foundation at the 56th edition of the Venice Biennale – has been recreated in the artist’s hometown with the support of HBL and the Lahore Biennale Foundation. A room in Venice has been reconstructed – almost replicated – with a half-surviving fresco on the ceiling, historical paintings in gilded frames, a fireplace filled with plastic flowers, a lamp stand and curtain, but all in pixelated form so that, from a distance, the visitor finds the interior replicating an actual space. Soon, the real space unfolds: on a large screen on one side of the wall, we see the back (streamed live) of the same room in Venice, in which all these objects and details are tangible, but perceived as a flat image in Lahore, like the other walls.

In Venice, the image of the room in Lahore is transmitted as the reflection of the actual location (flattened, as though seen in the mirror). However, more than this switching from one place to another, the most intriguing aspect of this artwork (titled “The Viewing, the Viewer, the Viewed”) is the way people become part of it. Anyone from the street can step into the room (the artwork) and see in front of them a group of individuals standing as though very near – but in reality very far. The work becomes a merging point between the citizens of Lahore and visitors in Venice. In many instances, illiterate young men from Lahore seem to be having a conversation – in rudimentary English or sign language, waving their hands about or even dancing – with those who do not know a single word of Urdu or Punjabi and yet are trying to communicate in the same ways.

Rana's work reverts to the ritual of conversation - whether with the Other or oneself

The work itself – a piece that is possible only in this age of digital communication – is about more than its technological connection or significance: it unfolds a number of aspects crucial to our existence in a world separated by political, social, cultural, religious, racial and economic divides. It addresses the difference or distance between art and audience, especially when it comes to the notion – rather, the responsibility – of “public art” that several artists have assumed.

Like the “real” world, the art world is fragmented into high and low art, public and private spaces, and temporal and permanent pieces. Rana’s work for the Venice Biennale explores and extends these notions and classification. To start with, in our surroundings, public art has now become a self-inflicted duty: artists tend to feel they must interact with the public outside the gallery circle and so some of them have created works in open spaces. A painting on a small wall in a crowded part of town. Small pieces of fabric spread across a large structure or monument. Graffiti in English on the outer walls of a building in a busy neighbourhood. All these appear superb once recorded and shown, say, at a talk by the artist or printed in a catalogue, but in actuality these attempts are lost in the large and congested environment. The artists might presume that their “public art” has been noticed and had some effect on local audiences, but often the reverse is the case.

In the context of these fallacies, “The Viewing, the Viewer, the Viewed” bridges the barriers between high and low art and brings the public into the sanctity of mainstream art – to one of the most prestigious international art exhibitions, the Venice Biennale. Without any sense of condescension, Rana makes it possible for flocks of ordinary folk (who may never have been to view an artwork and may never again in the future) to come into the room and communicate with complete strangers (unlike Skype, where one normally speaks to someone familiar).

Here, they are part of a project that challenges the questions and constructs of boundaries. As we know, after 9/11 it has become difficult for a man from a Muslim country, and particularly from Pakistan, to obtain visas for countries in Europe and North America. Often, persons carrying the familiar green passport are suspected of links (or sympathy) with Islamic jihadis. One need only compare today’s travel restrictions with the relative ease of foreign travel prior to 9/11. But this suspension of movement is not in one direction: if people from Pakistan are refused visas for Western countries, similarly and simultaneously citizens of those countries are discouraged from visiting the Islamic Republic.

A curator from Turin can wave to a carpenter from the Cantonment

Thus, the room in Liberty Market, Lahore, and the room in the Palazzo Benzon, Venice, provide a rare opportunity to step out of one’s reality and enter another realm – albeit through virtual means. Being in the room is more like being in a middle space located somewhere in between Italy and Pakistan. This sensation is accentuated when one looks at the luminous screen, which seems like a reflection in the mirror, but instead of seeing one’s own reflection against the backdrop of that room, one finds people in the other room occupying an identical backdrop. It is an intense and entertaining experience, confronting the Other, and realizing that human beings – even if separated by nationality, colour, gender, age or profession – can find some common points on which to communicate. Thus, a curator from Turin or a collector from Rome is waving and smiling to a carpenter from the Cantonment area or a cook who works in a Punjabi café. The work assumes immense significance in an age that is marked (or marred) by the clash of civilizations because it offers to untangle this notion and help one realize how human beings can transcend national categories and other confines.

The idea of national identity and the urge to move beyond this is an important element of the work of an artist who came to fame not in his home country, but in neighbouring India. From his exhibitions held in New Delhi and Mumbai, Rana became a familiar name in the country and so it was logical that he be invited to participate in the South Asian project in Venice with Shilpa Gupta from Mumbai. At the Venice Biennale, Rana is showing other works too: along with “War Within II” (digital print) and “Anatomy Lessons III” (nine-channel video on nine monitors), Rana has constructed images that deal with the idea of physical spaces and difference or distance in location. This phenomenon is repeated in an artwork installed in another room in Venice, titled “A Mirror Lies Vacant” in which views of walls from inside a room are constructed as the outer layer of a cube within that space. In another work, “I Don’t Always Feel Immaterial”, visitors enter a room in the Palazzo Benzon to see their own image reflected on the wall – like a mirror, made through a hidden camera in that space – but delayed such that they will only recognize it as their own if they stay longer.

In the prologue to a book of his interviews, Jorge Luis Borges writes: “The Greeks acquired the particular habit of conversation – how, we’ll never know. They doubted, persuaded, dissented, changed their minds, postponed. […] These scattered conjectures were the first root of what we call today, perhaps pretentiously, metaphysics. Western culture is inconceivable without these few conversing Greeks.” To some extent, Rashid Rana has, through his work, reverted to this ritual of conversation, whether it is with the Other or with oneself … if there is even any difference between the two.