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9/9/2009

Two exhibitions

CUE Art Foundation, New York

Naeem Mohaiemen
Curated by DJ Spooky

Now, every time I photograph a protest rally, there are bits I'm leaving out. At the edge of the lens, beyond the flare zone. The other rule of thirds: representation, exaggeration and omission.

On this day in January 2009, there are two parallel rallies in Dhaka. The one on the university campus organized by my friends and allies: the left student groups, the activist coalitions. The rally ends, as expected, with the ritual burning of the effigy. The words written on the straw figure have not changed much in three decades: there are still warmongers, still imperialism. After the fire goes out, we let everyone start coming into the university area again. Soon traffic is back to its usual chaotic mess.

The other rally is much bigger and more intense. In this one, I find no familiar faces, except among the photographers. Organized by one of the newer Islamist groups, a mixture of Khilafat and traditional left targets. Demanding the withdrawal of Bangladeshi soldiers from UN peacekeeping missions. Fueled by rumors of a future multinational force in Iraq, led by Bangladesh or Pakistan. Whether it would happen or not is almost beside the point. The intention is to resist, and loudly.

The appeal of this new confrontational politics is clear. These are not the Islamists we lazily lampooned in the 1980s. Now their rhetoric has a sharp edge and reality tint. When they argue that gangster capitalism has failed and is dragging down the world, that the global compact is imploding, it's a resonant message for many.

I heard the same message at the other rally as well. All the same targets: Imperialism, United Nations, Multinationals. Is the difference now only in icons?

A police officer asks what newspaper I'm with. When he learns I'm with no one, in fact I am no one, he says, "Tell me what government wants us to do. We are Muslim, and these protestors are Muslim. Do they expect us to beat them?"

These boys look similar to the crew that congregate in all my favorite spots. Dhanmondi Cafe Mango, Elephant Road, Dhaka University, Basundhara City Mall. (Did you know Basundhara is one of Asia's largest malls?) The same sideburns, sunglasses, low-rider jeans, fancy mobiles.

Weaving in and out of the crowd, I'm thinking of other men, another era. Those who survived the jails and manhunts are much older now. When I meet them they're always talking about failed dreams. Some argue the historic moment was not right. Others blame organizational weakness. We didn't study enough Marx and Lenin. We never understood dialectic materialism. Always men, slightly broken, talking about the what-if moment of the last century.

by DJ Spooky

Naeem Mohaiemen: Artist of the Floating World

Antonio Gramsci once said "to tell the truth is revolutionary." It's something I think about when I consider Naeem Mohaiemen's projects. In the decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall, artists have faced a crisis of contradictions that has only become more intense since the Obama Administration has taken office. Mohaiemen's work reflects a question that many of us need to consider: How does the idea of protest reflect cultural change in an era where many of the previous generation's aspirations and goals seem to have been achieved and surpassed? How do artists reflect the turbulence of a world that has unceasingly interpreted the post-Cold War landscape as being about, among other things, a conflict of religious ideology, while showing a lack of awareness of the historical implications of centuries of colonialism? I think you might find some answers in Mohaiemen's research.

When CUE Art Foundation asked me to curate an artist, I thought of Mohaiemen's work. I like to think of him as existing in the realm of what composers like Ryuichi Sakamoto like to call the "Neo-Geo Movement" - it's an amorphous group of artists, writers, and composers that come from non-European backgrounds, who use contemporary technology in some very interesting ways. If you go back far enough, there're some geopolitical relationships that Mohaiemen's work evokes with a critique of his own culture, politics and history and its connection with the wider world. First and foremost, he is an artist that uses a process of lyrical inquiry combined with media techniques to revisit themes of post-colonial complexity ? the nuance of Bangladesh's neo-colonial relationship to Pakistan and post-independence relationship with India; the communal politics affecting Hindu and Muslim communities; the diaspora aesthetics of what it means to live in New York. All of the above find a home in Mohaiemen's work.

When you think of the last several elections in Bangladesh and its constant drum beat of political turmoil, one is drawn to Mohaiemen's unapologetic use of contemporary materials (cell phones, graffiti, surveillance photography, text messages) that foster the kind of dialogue that media artists in the U.S. and Europe take for granted. I like to think of several other Bangladeshi artists like Hasan Elahi (whose experiences after 9/11 led him to create an entire genre of ‘surveillance art') and Shishir Bhattacharjee (who creates dynamic canvases that reflect, in a surrealist fashion, some of the turbulence of Dhaka) as navigation points on the same aesthetic map.

I hope my selection of Mohaiemen for CUE Art Foundation is an update on one of my favorite composers, Duke Ellington, whose composition "Afro-Eurasian Eclipse" spelled out in music some of the issues that I find in Mohaiemen's oeuvre. Ellington created a collaborative music piece about Africa and Asia in 1971. When you listen to this album and then realize, this man was in his late 60's when he wrote it, you realize that sound, truth, and art are never separate. This music is heavy, hard, demanding and in some way revolutionary. In a musical world where many artists tend to get soft, predictable, and start getting "adult contemporary" in the middle age years, Ellington never did. He pushed on, the fact that he could do a suite like this, about his travels, without ever sounding like he was "appropriating" the art of Asia and Africa, but using music as an invocation, and still sounding like Ellingtonia is something of wonder. Even more to the point, the connection between the music and the art of Ellington took me further afield ? the curatorial link reminds me of another situation ? The Bandung Conference of 1955.

The first large-scale Asian-African or Afro-Asian Conference-also known as the Bandung Conference-was a meeting of Asian and African states, most of which were newly independent, which took place between April 18 and April 24, 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia. The conference was organized by Indonesia, Burma, Pakistan, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and India and was coordinated by Ruslan Abdulgani, Secretary General of the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The conference's stated aims were to promote Afro-Asian economic and cultural cooperation and to oppose colonialism or neocolonialism by the United States, the Soviet Union, or any other imperialistic nation. I like to think of the conference as a jump off point for some of the issues around why I selected Mohaiemen's work.

From Ellington to Bandung, and back again, we see a stream of idealistic, cross-cultural approaches to contemporary cultural production. I think that Mohaiemen has inherited some portions of the ideological debates in rapidly transforming societies like Bangladesh, the fragmented political battles of New York, and the new media context his art and writing explores.

Think of the use of the term "Fourth World." Since the 1974 publication of The Fourth World: An Indian Reality by George Manuel, "Fourth World" has come to be known as a synonym for stateless and notably impoverished or marginalized nations. I find it a convenient way to look outside the frame of references we've inherited from the 20th century, but that's just an afterthought.

How do we update the situation and just realize that we're all here, now. That's what Mohaiemen's work tells us. Be here, be now. But realize that things always change - it's in the nature of humanity to ceaselessly demand truth from the powers that be. Sometimes artists need to ask the questions not just of one power, but many.

I hope you enjoy the show.

DJ Spooky, aka Paul D. Miller, Milan, 2009.

Naeem Mohaiemen is a writer and artist working in Dhaka and New York City. He uses text, photo, video and archives to explore histories of the international left, utopia/dystopia slippage, post-partition South Asia, and globally interlinked security panic. Projects include My Mobile Weighs A Ton (militarization); Otondro Prohori, Guarding Who (surveillance); Penn Station Kills Me (monuments); Kazi in Nomansland (amnesia); and Red Ant Motherchod Meet Starfish Nation (military coup).

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Adiwit Ansathammarat
Curated by Kay Rosen

"Adi’s feet are planted not so much in the past versus present, or Asia versus North America, but rather in a zone somewhere in between where memory, dreams and fantasy bleed together. Filtered through the fine mesh of his personal sensibility, a diary emerges in the form of painting or sculpture about loss, time, distance, and even humor."
Kay Rosen

Pangs of longing and the bleat of raw memory reverberate across the canvasses and scuptural surfaces of artist, Adiwit Ansathammarat. Born and raised in Thailand and educated in Scotland and Chicago, Ansathammarat is well versed in the painful and arduous process of leaving one’s home, culture and family. It is through these experiences that his work examines the altered emotional terrain of one’s personal relationships when physicality, comfort and proximity are removed. His paintings employ repeated abstract forms that bend, rip, tear and fall. His scuptural work, assembled with humble materials, emphasize aspects of distance, time and weight. These large canvasses, small watercolors and sculptural works form a personal narrative: a visual, abstracted confession of pains felt by the artist.

She left me for L.A. (detail, above) is a large, unstretched canvas measuring 120" x 240." The monumental surface is saturated with deep colors and covered with repetitive forms that resemble falling leaves in a pouring rain. Along the bottom of the canvas, Ansathammarat has torn away triangular shapes that emphasize the act of cutting and mirror the leaf-like forms in the canvase above. Both the repetition of the painted forms and the cutting of the canvas evokes a sense of angst – a heart beating rapidy or the pounding of a drum. They are also regimented like a calendar, not only parsing out time, but underlining it. I wish you could come home with me tonight (right) employs simple materials and shares in the formal simplicity of his two-dimensional work. Through the reptition of triangular and circular shapes, a highly abstracted human form is perceived. Within the frame of the body hangs a weighted form – a collection of conical and orb-like objects suspended from rope. The contrast of the colorful objects and the bleach-white outer surafaces of the piece draws the viewer to focus on this inner suspension and the sense of intertia and heaviness created by the hanging objects and tripod-like frame. Both of these pieces, and much of Ansathammarat’s other work, enlist sentimental titles that, while referencing a very personal account, underscore the more general and universal themes apparent in the work. While so much of the work may initially seem melancholic, the artist’s sense of playfulness and humor emerges through the humble materials used and the almost whimsical images utilized.

On view at CUE Art Foundation, Ansathammarat’s first solo show in New York, will be a collection of large to medium-scale paintings and medium to small-scale floor-standing assemblages, all created during the artist’s temporary return to Thailand in 2009. Through the incorporation of all planes within the gallery space, the artist effectively creates a formal and conceptual "diary" – one in which we all share at least one entry.

Free catalogues available.

For additional information, please contact Ryan Thomas, Programs Coordinator, CUE Art Foundation, 212-206-3583, or email ryan.thomas@cueartfoundation.org

Opening reception Thursday, September 10, 6:00 – 8:00pm

CUE Art Foundation
511 West 25th Street, Ground Floor New York, New York 10001
Hours
Tuesday - Friday 10-5
Saturday: 11-5
Closed Sunday and Monday

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