Khoj's Role in South Asia

< The First Triangle workshop to be established in the region was the KHOJ International Artists workshop in New Delhi in 1997. Over the past seven years, KHOJ has worked consistently at building relationships within the artists’ community locally, regionally and internationally.>

Towards Building a South Asian Network for the Arts

I speak from the view point of a practitioner - someone who works on the ground – focusing on the ‘how’ of developing deeper connections between art practitioners in the region. But I also speak as an Indian, which implies an inherent and often awkward negotiation with the perceived hegemonic position of India in the region.

The premise for success in any intercultural work is one of underlying mutual respect and trust between the partners and I would like to believe that the trust and respect is in place. But more importantly as a spokesperson today, I would like to state at the outset that I am but one of the links in this network of extremely vital and committed individuals.

Some amazingly nuanced presentations on art practice in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India have been presented at the conference and for several present, this may have been a ‘first’ introduction to art practice in south Asia. Already a commonality of issues and overlapping concerns can be seen to be articulated from within the region.

Ironically, audiences in our own countries have not been so privileged.

Despite the existence of profound historical connections and commonalities between the different Asian countries, several of us are still largely unaware of the art practice that exists across our borders and within our immediate neighborhood. Our normal instinct is to establish comparisons between each location and the “west”, leaving inter regional/asian connections largely unexplored.

In the past 5 - 10 years Asian initiatives in the visual arts such as the Fukuoka Triennial Japan, the Asia Pacific Triennial ( APT) in Australia , and the Kwanju Biennale to name a few, have provided a forum for artists from the south Asian region to come together formally. But while such forums undoubtedly inform and perhaps excite the local populace, their publications creating a flutter of interest internationally, circulation within the region does not get addressed.

While literature, music, even documentary films manage to cross borders, the situation for the visual arts has been vastly different and conclaves for the visual artists– specially outside of government or international initiative - are a relatively new phenomena.

Background of Inter Regional Networks

The most dynamic and vibrant people to people network in the region so far has been the Feminist network spawned by the local women’s movement in each country (which now works across the region in Nepal, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.) Human Rights Groups have always existed in the region but after the nuclear testing by India and Pakistan in 1998, it has gathered greater momentum. Both these networks are strong, active regionally and doing some commendable work. HIMAL, a monthly magazine edited and published in Nepal with contributions by writers in the region, is the only magazine in South Asia to cover regional politics and social issues in an insightful and critical manner.

In 1985, inspired by the success of ASEAN, the heads of the 7 states of India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and the Maldives, formed SAARC. The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation with its lofty ideals gave rise to hopes of greater economic and cultural cooperation within the region. Unfortunately, with Indo-Pak politics dominating the region, SAARC has not been allowed to go beyond paying lip service to these ideals.

In each country, there are essentially two main bodies that facilitate international cultural exchange: the government and the cultural arms of foreign embassies. Institutions such as the British Council, Alliance Francais and the Goethe Institute, to name a few, have a strong presence in all the countries in south Asia and despite being more imaginative in the participation of local artists, their policy of bilateralism is clearly constraining. (It is heartening to note a perceptible shift in this policy within the British Council in the past two years as they are beginning to facilitate greater regional interaction than before.)

The Government sponsored Bangladesh Asian Biennale and the Indian Triennials also include participation from the region however, the curation is not only conservative and ad hoc but is increasingly bowing to the diktats of an ‘officially accepted art practice’ in the pursuance of nationalistic agendas.

I would like to share with you some statistics from the Department of Culture in India to enable you to envision the level of commitment these agencies have towards regional exchange.

Of all the exhibitions sent abroad by the National Gallery of Modern Art ( the nodal agency that mediates visual art exchange in India) from 1995 to 2001, one went to Dhaka for the Festival of India in Bangladesh and one went to Beijing. Three more to other Asian countries. If we consider the incoming exhibitions from 1989, of the 76 incoming exhibitions, again only one each from Bangladesh and China, and 5 from Korea and Japan – again fuelled by the active interest of the Japan Foundation. So in a 12 year period, art received at the official level from Asian countries is less than 10%! The larger picture of SAARC is even more dismal. According to a source in the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, due to the political instability in the region 80% of all programmes are postponed and 50% are cancelled. !

I am convinced that similar statistics exist for Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Given the above, I feel privileged to say that despite the volatile state of affairs in the region last year : the Royal Palace massacre in Nepal and the ensuing Maoist disturbances; the increased tension bordering on war after the failed Indo Pak talks at the Agra summit ; the destruction of the Sri Lankan fleet by suicide bombers and the mega disaster of 11/09 which had far reaching implications for the region, KHOJ organized a modest gathering of about 25 artists and curators from the region concurrently with an exhibition of art from Pakistan in Delhi in November 2001.

The objective of the meeting was to discuss the possibility of establishing a dynamic South Asian Network for the Arts by developing exchange possibilities with partners in the region at various levels.

Our Network Model:

I represent an autonomous, artist led initiative called KHOJ International Artists’ workshop based in India. The network that we have been developing in the region is based on the Triangle model of workshops of which we are an integral part .

The first Triangle workshop was established in 1982 in New York by Robert Loder and Anthony Caro . This was followed by workshops in South Africa where during the time of apartheid they had a significant impact by bringing artists from different backgrounds and regions together. This project went on to inspire artists to set up similar workshops in Zimbabwe, Botswana, Mozambique, Senegal, Jamaica, Cuba, Australia, Egypt and four such workshops in south Asia. New workshops are being set up almost every year in different parts of the world generating a workshop “movement” so to speak..

The aim of each workshop is to function as an art laboratory that brings artists together from different parts of the country , from the sub continent and from around the globe , setting up a cooperative , non hierarchical work situation where dialogue , exchange and transfer of information , energy and skills can take place as an intensely lived experience. All workshops are artist led, non didactic and are independent of formal institutions such as academic and governmental institutions. Each workshop is unique and depends on its success on the stimulus that develops through the meeting of artists with various cultural backgrounds, working together over a short and intense period of time - normally two weeks – exchanging ideas and practice. These workshops encourage experimentation, stimulate creativity and forge contacts between artists that extend beyond the confinement of the workshops.

The workshops have created a unique network of artists actively engaged in developing local and international exchanges

The KHOJ workshop was set up in 1997 and since its inception, its direction has been towards the empowerment of so called third world artists and their cross cultural bonding outside racial baises and for an exchange of flow of information along alternative lines. Over the past 6 years we have had artists from Iran, Egypt, Cuba, Argentina, Singapore, Thailand, Japan, Mainland China, Taiwan and several countries in Africa participate in our workshops. As a deliberate policy our core invitees have been from south Asia. Over the past 6 years we have invited 5 artists from Pakistan and 4 from Sri Lanka and 2 from Bangladesh.

After participating in KHOJ or one of the Triangle workhops abroad, several of the artists in the region were enthused to initiate similar workshops in their respective countries. KHOJ and Triangle actively facilitate these workshops and in January 2001 the first Vasl International workshop was held in Gadani, near Karachi at a breathtaking location sandwiched between a ship breaking site, a fishing village and the deep blue ocean. In September of the same year the Teertha International Artists’ workshop was held at Lunuganga, the sprawling estate of the famous architect Geoffery Bawa near Colombo in Sri Lanka. In early 2003, the Britto Workshop had it first workshop at Tepantor, a site most sought after by the film industry of Bangladesh, near Dhaka.

Artists from Egypt, China, the UK, Singapore, Myanmar Thailand, the Netherlands, Nigeria attended these workshops. The core invitees in each case were from the neighbouring countries. And while the workshops forge alliances between the local and international artists, they also empower the artists to address local issues in distinctive ways.

The Teertha workshop was modeled as an interdisciplinary workshop engaging both visual and traditional performance artists on a common platform. Artists from the south and the north provinces of Sri Lanka were invited to work together - an important first as they have been severed by war in the past two decades. In Pakistan, artists from Lahore and Karachi came together for the first time to organize a common forum for the visual arts. In India the workshop has tried to address the folk art/contemporary artist divide by inviting folk artists to the workshops with significant results. And in Bangladesh, the Britto workshop by its very presence has tried to create a forum for younger voices within the extremely institutionalized and hierarchical art scene.

Each workshop has a ripple effect spawning other projects. In India the instances are many: Quddus Mirza, an artist from Lahore attended the KHOJ workshop in 1998 and has since been writing a quarterly column in Art India, the only contemporary art magazine in India.. When sculptors in Bangladesh wanted to work in granite, an inaccessible material in Bangladesh, KHOJ facilitated a residency with the Jindal group in Karnataka; Shilpa Gupta from Mumbai and Huma Mulji from Karachi met at the KHOJ workshop in 1999 and subsequently organized Aar paar a public art project by Indian and Pakistani artist in the cities of Mumbai and Karachi. They are currently working on Aar Paar II.

As a result of the success of the annual workshops, a more formal structure in the form of international artists’ residencies has been instituted. Many artists from India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have expressed interest in a programme which would provide the opportunity to work alongside international artists on a longer term basis than is possible during a short workshop. KHOJ has already started its residency programme and both Vasl and Britto are organizing their first international month long residencies for upto 5 artists in 2003. Being artist led it would ensure that the visiting artists are “networked upon arrival” and their understanding and exchange within the art scene can be expedited.

Networking, collaborating and the sharing of resources is of prime importance where the greatest resource today is the huge pool of interesting artists linked to the network in different parts of the world.

There are undoubtedly inherent problems in this developmental process that need to be anticipated. Since the workshops are held annually or sometimes even once in two years, limiting the exchange of artists within the region, it is quite possible that the network could lose momentum before a critical mass is achieved for it to sustain itself. Worse still that the wider aim of the network is reduced to an exclusive coterie of self serving individuals. A constant vigil is necessary if the integrity of the workshops and the network is to be maintained. .

In order to widen the spectrum and the benefits of workshops to a larger community of South Asian artists, we are endeavoring to develop a tangible means of communication on the net which would offer hundreds of artists in the region the chance to share and access information, opening up new communication links and leading to an increase of artistic activities .The existing workshop and residency programme will provide a constituency through which these objectives can be achieved and on which further expansion of the network can be built.

Developing the network sounds simpler than it has been. Making those first connections within the region itself was not easy. Six years ago access to the internet was limited. It was not an email friendly era and even if it were there was not much to be gained as a search on the internet would have in all probability yielded a visit to American university sites offerring courses in south Asian studies or extremely exotic tourist sites!

So how did we make that first connection?

The first KHOJ workshop in India in 1997 coincided with a series of exhibitions called Mappings that I had curated to commemorate the 50 years of independence for India and Pakistan. Though keen to connect with artists in Pakistan, I was convinced that direct contact with Pakistan was not possible. A chance discussion with participating artist Nalini Malani who had worked with Karachi based artist Ifthikhar Dadi in Copenhagen led me to pick up the phone and invite him to participate in the exhibition and by default in the KHOJ workshop!

We were introduced to artists from Sri Lanka by Suhannya Rafael of the APT in Australia; to artists in Nepal by Raiji Kuroda of The Fukuoka Asian Arts Museum, Japan; to artists in Bangladesh by the curators of SHISHA in the UK, to artists in Bhutan by Sebastian Lopez of the Gate Foundation in the Netherlands; to artists in Tibet by Clare Harris in the UK and I have just returned from a conference in Myanmar last week which was organized by artists of Singaporean origin based in Cologne!

If making the connections was difficult, maintaining them is harder still.

The increased state of political volatility in the region coupled with the mechanisms instituted by the government belies their publicly stated commitment to what is termed “track two diplomacy “ or people to people contact, making intercultural work in the region extremely difficult.

Visas are difficult to obtain. When we organized the Network meeting/ public forum and exhibition of contemporary miniatures from Pakistan in November 2001, more than 50 % of our time went in writing to individual country departments of Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc within the Ministry of External Affairs. Visas between India and Pakistan require endless planning at both ends and sympathetic, like minded friends are an essential ingredient.

While we were in the midst of inviting curators and art historians for our public forum in November 2001 an article in the newspaper stopped us in our tracks. It was reported that under ‘secret’ guidelines issued by the MHA, Indian universities and academic bodies were told that foreign scholars “should not be generally considered to attend conferences of a political, semi political, communal or religious nature.” Further, academics invited from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, China or Sri Lanka, regardless of the subject of the conference were required to get prior clearance not only from the Ministry of External Affairs but also from the Ministry of Home Affairs as well.

Funding is a serious concern for any artists’ organization. Since Government funding in the region is as good as nonexistent, sizeable corporate sponsorship is still to come of age and private donations from friends and family can at best be limited, most of us have no recourse but to rely on International donors most of whom fund only registered societies. In Bangladesh, getting yourself registered as an NGO to enable receipt of funds from abroad can take anything up to 5 years! In India the receipt of foreign funding by an NGO (non governmental organization) is a legal offence unless the appropriate sanctions have been approved under the FCRA (Foreign Contribution Regulations Act). Pakistan and Sri Lanka are relatively luckier in this regard.

With the imposition of several restrictions on the organisation of workshops/seminars specially within the region it is not surprising that the Britto working group in Bangladesh had to go through at least five layers of permissions in the ministry to preempt any possible harassment of the foreign artists at the workshop by the army. When the Vasl working group in Pakistan organized an impromptu presentation by a theatre group at the workshop site, there was a sense of transgressing the law as any public theatre performance in Pakistan has to have prior permission from the government!

The rise of the right wing fundamentalism and an exaggerated suspicion of the ‘other’ in the region has caused several problems. We in India were taken aback at the ugly turn of events that took place after the December 13 attack on the Indian parliament. The exhibition Maneuvering Miniatures from Pakistan curated by Virginia Whiles and organized by KHOJ opened in Mumbai in early December, 2001 after a great reception in Delhi. In the wake of December 13, 2001 the gallery where it was being held had to bring down the exhibition as it was threatened by right wing activists. In the same month, KHOJ had artists from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Egypt in residence in Delhi. The anti Muslim feeling was at an all time high forcing some of the artists who had chosen to work on relatively sensitive subjects in their art work, to modify /censor their work for the exhibition, for fear of personal safety as well as that of the organizers i.e. us.

Was that a cop out? Where does one draw the line between artistic freedom and personal safety? Will the morass of governmental legalese and paranoia render us impotent?

Developing the network has its difficult moments. But while the process is a slow and invisible one, there is a palpable sense that if we persist it will soon reach its ‘tipping point- a point when small things begin to make a big difference.

I also hope that one day this network will be redundant. The need for it fulfilled – it will take on a new avatar…but until then, we have to persist.

Conclusion

In conclusion I would like to quote Gerardo Mosquera, art historian and critic based in Havana, Cuba who has articulated succinctly the “why” for regional connections.

“Supposedly we live in a world of global exchanges and communications. Every time the word globalization is mentioned,one tends to imagine a planet in which all the points are connected in a recticular network. In fact connections only happen inside a radial and hegemonic pattern around centers of power, where peripheral countries (most of the world) remain disconnected from one another – are only connected indirectly via and under control of the centers.

There are limited south – south connections and we are still far from a globalized art scene”.

He goes on to say “The third world seems to lack the capacity to legitimate artistically: This arises from a deficit of logistics, but also from a lack of ‘assertiveness’, of initiative from ‘inside towards the outside’ and from not strengthening enough its own epistemes. The absence of south to south prestige is not surprising since the art that circulates South –South is insignificant.”

“The movement has to be south - south so that we can establish dialogue without mediators- as well as south – north so that we can offer our own views to the center. The zones of silence need to connect horizontally.”

I believe connections within our “zones of silence” have to be made and explored through common concerns rather than Eurocentric theories and paradigms. And while the complex questions of identity and definition need to be addressed, a shift in paradigms can only come about through the exploration of similarities and differences on the ground; between people.

If we focus only on the contradictions and complexities, we will be overwhelmed and reduced to complete inaction when what we really need is mutual action.

We need that “assertiveness” that Gerardo speaks of.

Pooja Sood
April 2003