Photographs by Mark Blower
Venice Biennale –
Collateral Event; Palazzo Benzon - My East is Your West. My East is Your West, until
October 1, is
a Collateral Event of the Biennale. Commissioned by The Gujral Foundation. This
beautiful landmark exhibition unites for the first time at the Biennale the
historically conflicting nations of India and Pakistan in a shared exhibition
by artists from both countries. Shilpa Gupta (Mumbai) and Rashid Rana
(Lahore) each present a new series of works at the splendid Palazzo Benzon
on the Grand Canal. As neither India nor Pakistan has a permanent national
pavilion in Venice, this presentation provides a unique platform for artists
from South Asia to enter into a dialogue through the arts, representing the
Indian subcontinent as one region.
Above. Unititled
installation - Shilpa Gupta – 2014-15 – Room 5.
Photograph by Mark Blower
Rashid Rana and Shilpa Gupta
My East is Your West. Titled
after a light installation by Shilpa Gupta, My East is Your West was born out of the desire to reposition
the complex climate of historical relations between South Asia’s nation-states
and presents the region as a shared cultural cartography. Shilpa Gupta’s new
series of works brings together over four years of ongoing research in the
India-Bangladesh borderlands and the world’s longest security barrier between
two nation-states currently in construction. She exhibits works ranging from
installation, video, photography, drawings, text-based pieces and performances.
Rashid Rana presents an immersive setting across five rooms surveying the
conception of presence, temporality and location as collective experience,
across digital printmaking, video and installation.
Photographs by Mark Blower
My East is Your West - Rashid Rana - War Within II (and detail) -2013-14
- C print +
DIASEC
Photograph by Mark Blower
My East is Your West - Rashid Rana -
The viewing, the viewer and the viewed - 2015 - Single channel projection
My East is Your West - Rashid Rana -
A mirror lies vacant
2015 - Site-responsive installation
and latex print on wallpaper
My East is Your West -
Shilpa Gupta – Untitled – Room 1 - 2014-15
Reflecting each
distinctive practice, both artists explore and examine the integral essence of
a people divided, a history which spans antiquity, colonial modernity and a
cosmopolitan present entangled in conflict. With works that bring to the
foreground entangled realities of the Indian subcontinent, Shilpa Gupta and
Rashid Rana develop a material aesthetic that surveys the potential of a common
region, separate from the state and its model.
Photograph by Mark Blower
My East is
Your West - Shilpa Gupta – Untitled – Room 4 - 2014-15
Photograph by Mark Blower
My East is Your West -
Shilpa Gupta – Untitled – Room 1 - 2014-15