November 8, 2003

Canadian artist and curator Rachel Kalpana James, on a recent trip to Pakistan, spoke Amra Ali about the issues faced by the South Asian Diaspora in North America

To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul —Simone Well

The voice of the South Asian Diaspora in North America has gained a focus that had already made its impact through the prominence given to writers from this region, such as Sara Suleri, V.S. Naipaul, Mohsin Hamid, Bharti Mukherjee and Rohinton Mistry, to name but a few. In the visual arts, however, South Asian voices have found less accessibility in terms of finding the opportunities to address their concerns and points of view. Often labelled and branded as the ‘Other’, visual art of the Diaspora has remained on the periphery and perhaps still struggles to be heard and seen alongside mainstream art.

In this context, the visit of Canadian artist and curator Rachel Kalpana James from Toronto to Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Islamabad this September was more than an encouraging sign that artists of South Asian origin from Canada are of significance in projecting a viewpoint that represents an important aspect of Canada. Here at the invitation of the Canadian High Commissioner to Pakistan, Kalpana brought with her two installations, I know you Louise Boothe (2003) and Tagore & Mrs. E. (2000), which were shown at the Croweaters gallery, Lahore; parts of it were also shown at the V.M. gallery, in Karachi.

She met a cross section of artists, students and those who write on art, and presented slide shows. It goes without saying that the state-sponsored visit of an artist is a welcome rarity, especially of somebody like Kalpana who represents a minority and whose approach to art by its very nature is more experimental than the average Canadian art seen in galleries there.

Kalpana’s parents are originally from Andhra Pradesh, India. She was raised in Nova Scotia and grew up to settle down in Toronto, the artistic hub of Canada, and also a place to where a large portion of the immigrant population from this region has converged and found home. This home away from home has become an important aspect of Canadian multiculturalism today, a process that started some time back in the early ’60s, but gained a wider expression only since the ’80s.

Exhibition of works by artists, such as Shirin Nishat and Muna Hatoum, at the National Gallery in Ottawa in the ’80s and ’90s, and later of Shahzia Sikander at the Museum of Modern Art, have brought into focus viewpoints that read a different story — of a hybrid identity within the North American milieu.

My meeting with Kalpana took place recently in Karachi on a lazy, hot Sunday afternoon, where she preferred to sit out on the old-fashioned shaded veranda of an old club with palms and Gul Mohar trees seen at a distance rather than the air-conditioned dining hall inside.

We looked at bougenvilla flowers and Monsteria creepers; I told her how my mother had asked for two things on my visit this summer from Karachi to Ottawa; one, cuttings of different varieties of Bougenvilla, all of which were taken from me by the officials upon arrival in Canada because these plants might have brought in unwanted insects with them; and another, which I was unable to get, was her wish for me to tape the voice of the ‘koyel’ for her!

This, I told Kalpana, is perhaps the saddest part of an immigrant’s existence, when you miss the smells and sounds of an environment that becomes a part of you, stays with you and the longing that makes you yearn for it.

While there may not be the same longing in the second generation, whose home is Canada, theirs is still essentially a hybrid identity or a multiple existence; a ‘desi’ one at home, in terms of customs, religion, dress, food, or anything else, much different from the one outside it. Living within these identities has no doubt given birth to a new subculture, one which demands its particular set of norms and values; those which seek to be accepted or at least understood.

With a view to promoting viewpoints from this angle, Kalpana and a group of artists in Toronto set up SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Collective) in 1993. It is a non-profit, artist-run organization aiming to ‘critically explore the complexities and subtleties of experience, identity and ideas’. As the brochure reads, it was created to ‘facilitate the production, presentation and distribution of Diasporic South Asian contemporary art’. It pushes also to be ‘collaborative, site-specific and public in order to bridge the gap between art and culture’.

SAVAC’s various projects and art events include curated shows with titles such as, ‘painting over the lines’, ‘alienation’, ‘rebirth of space’, ‘tourists in our own land(s)’, among others. In 1998, a street project called ‘Taking it to the streets’ took posters voicing concerns for social issues that were pasted on newspaper stands, billboards etc. Tamara Zeta Makhan, for example, did photo-transfers of children on ivory soap bars and displayed them at Milan’s store on Gerrard Street;and on the shelves of a local library along the children’s book section.

Such art stands at the far spectrum of expression in terms of the art that we are accustomed to in both the traditional and contemporary and here at home in Pakistan. Alternate art stands with its own strength as a tool for dialogue, communication, and as a voice of sanity, in times when prejudice and stereotyping must not be confused with identity and ethnicity. We, however, are torn between art as direct as this and art that uses unfamiliar tools for the expression of ideas.

The historical significance of visual aesthetics presents the Pakistani artist with conflicting concerns, as it also provides an excitement in trying to uncoil the meaning of how art is understood elsewhere. Cynthia Freeland, in her text, ‘But is it art?’ addresses similar concerns through a kaleidoscopic look at aboriginal tourist art, shock art, the art of Damien Hirst, of Goya’s paintings, etc., presenting a stimulating study of art from a contemporary vantage point in trying to understand what art is.

Other projects by SAVAC, such as the one with installations in Toronto taxis mainly operated by South Asians, instigate dialogue and new, experimental ways of expression. Kalpana’s installation I know you Louise Boothe is an audio and digital print installation, in which she uses the diary of an unknown Toronto woman called Louise Boothe, written in 1941. Kalpana bought it for three dollars and was fascinated by the rather mundane account of this single woman’s life.

The diary contains entries such as ‘went to visit mother’, dentist’s appointments, or dated phrases as ‘today was a red-letter day, or ‘the day of the curse’, etc. There would be little sparks such as profound quotes through the text of Louise Boothe who was a librarian. The artist began to see similarities between herself and Louise Boothe, both bright, working, single and lonely women living in Toronto.

The digital printout of several pages of the diary carries subtle visual punctuations left over; sometimes a coffee stain, an interesting fold of the paper or the drip of a pen — all pauses that make the diary of this unknown woman a telling statement of our times.

That the artist identifies herself with the similarities found in the life of a white woman goes to reflect the universality of things that we share despite our cultural and racial differences. The audio carries the views of two South Asian fictional writers, Jaspreet Singh and Shawna Balkdwin, whose voices converge at times to agree on their views of Louise Boothe. Thus, Louise Boothe’s diary becomes a vehicle of involvement for the artist and her viewer, each adding to it a part of them, making it as much about themselves as about this unknown woman. The voice of the South Asian Diaspora becomes very significant at a time when the flow of immigrants to Canada continues to grow, and different ways of living and seeing must be exposed and understood on both sides. An exchange through art provides a far more intense interaction and greater possibilities of understanding than is possible through the usual ‘official’ networks.