March 08, 2009

The exhibition of David Alesworth and Huma Mulji's latest works at Zahoor ul Akhlaq Gallery, National College of Art, Lahore was important for many reasons, including the personal history of the two artists. Both, having previously spent a number of years in Karachi, are now based in Lahore and teach at the Beaconhouse National University. This displacement may not be significant in their lives or academic careers, but it has certainly changed their art practices.

In Karachi, the two artists were involved with Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture (Alesworth as a tutor and Mulji as pupil), and in different capacities were engaged in the movement of popular art. Alesworth was active, along with his contemporaries, in appropriating images, materials and techniques of truck painting and transport decoration, while Mulji was inspired by the methods of toy making and incorporated its components (such as Rexene and plastic) in her art. In a sense the work of these artists is part of the urge to formulate a language of art that is supposed to be away from the sophisticated High Art, and more embedded into the idiom of folk art and popular imagery.

Now, after a considerable passage of time, one may examine this fascination for popular art amongst our artists (some of them are either from abroad or were trained in UK and USA). Actually their attention towards visual and creative expression of a section of society, that was not part of art or even considered culturally developed, could have been a move to declass them; a means to associate with the part — and art — of the population, with whom they otherwise hardly mix or interact socially. However, after some years and experience of working with them, they collaborated with painters, decorators, blacksmiths and other artisans closely and somewhat equally.

Alesworth’s move from Karachi to Lahore led to a shift in his ideas and pictorial strategies. The popular art is no more a valid point of reference in his new work. Instead, other issues and concerns now define his aesthetics. In the exhibition at NCA, he displayed a number of black and white photographs, along with a large sculpture.

Pictures, of a record room in an office, were framed and arranged in a sequence that complement the shape of his sculpture, installed in the centre of the gallery space. The sculpture, constructed with 180 cubes (all made in grey steel) has a presence that is mysterious and grand at the same time. Grand because the size of the work is unexpectedly large, and in a way echoes the form of holy structures. Its mysterious quality is evident in the way the whole piece is created — since the parts are arranged such that one is unable to enter it. Thus the only view or interaction is from the outside, which enhances the sense of sacredness and intrigue.

 

Mulji has tried to comment on the phenomenon of urbanisation, and how the element of nature (symbolising it with the water buffalo) is entangled, strangled and strayed

 

At the same instance, the artist's decision to dab the steel cubes in varying shades of grey adds an air of gloom, something that is in harmony with the row of pictures, depicting discarded files and old papers stacked on shelves. This accumulation of papers, covered in dust, neglected and decaying, generates an air of nostalgia and grief — feelings that are doubled with the large 'unapproachable' box installed in the middle of the gallery.

In a remote way, both the photographs and sculpture, remind one of a German artist, who also commented on how the collective memory of human kind — in the form of written word — is destroyed for one or the other reason. Anselm Kiefer has made huge racks of books in lead, which appear as if burnt books are preserved (after Nazis' public burning of books) in their ashen state. However Alesworth's work communicates a different concept, because the artist is keen on commenting on the atomic experiments and the destruction of the humanity, a preoccupation that was indicated by naming it 12.2.42. “A tribute to Fermi's first experimental nuclear pile built under the squash courts of Chicago University in 1942. Here on the second of December the first sustaining chain reaction was initiated amidst a stack of graphite blocks and uranium metal,” he explains.

The annihilation of humanity, is also the main theme — albeit in another form — in the art of Mulji. At NCA, she exhibited her digital prints along with sculpture pieces. In these works, she has tried to comment on the phenomenon of urbanisation, and how the element of nature (symbolising it with the water buffalo) is entangled, strangled and strayed.

In her two sculptures, a stuffed buffalo is made to hang on an electric pole next to another one sticking its neck out of a drainage pipe. The craft of making these pieces, as well as their overwhelming dimension and presence emanates a sense of shock and awe. Unusual juxtaposition of an animal and the samples of our civic life, serve to convey her theme, which is suggested through her prints too, fabricated with a lot of fantastical undertones.

These prints show buffalos on top of high rise buildings, flying in the sky, landed in the crops, in front of a plaster horses and outside of a huge gate. All these situations indicate how the innocent animal is caught in a surrounding that is alien, hostile and odd. Even though Mulji has attempted to state her theme through these prints, but in comparison to these contrived exercises, her sculptures are more impressive in terms of originality of theme, skill of execution and the extend of imagination. These works indicate how a contemporary artist can break formal confines and discard limitations of other kinds.

With their interesting works on display, that marks a new stage in their creative careers, both artists have demonstrated how the move from Karachi has served to liberate them from their earlier concerns and pictorial practices. Even though the elements of popular art can still be traced in some ways, their works have a personal, profound and unpredictable vocabulary now.