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Photo: Tom Warren

Deeper dialogues: Detail of wall element from ‘Where were you in 92?’ and Kanishka Raja (below).

A lot of art that is created within the context of being a South Asian artist practising outside the native soil is extremely explicit. Regardless of what these artists claim, most of their works deal with issues of identity. Their art reflects perspectives on matters that relate to being from a certain ethnic background and its inherent complexity when discussed within a global art context. A vast majority of these works are deliberately confrontational. Such provocative art finds its historic precedent in the early 1900s, when Dadaism was instigated in Zurich as a movement within the artistic community, in protest to World War I. It went on to influence a number of avant garde movements including pop art, which clearly influences and informs Kanishka Raja’s works.

It is stimulating to see how Raja works within a certain formal framework to construct his notions of a serious and relevant political, religious and social zeitgeist. Instead of being didactic, Raja’s work seeks from its viewer to ponder and question what it stands for. The viewer is faced with a sleek aesthetic beauty through Raja’s use of perfect linear Renaissance perspectives, coupled with the bright colours that are reminiscent of Indian textiles. In fact, putting together elements of Western art theories and tenets of Indian art, especially of miniature paintings, is typical in Raja’s works. By doing so Raja recontextualises art historical canons of beauty and perfection in order to express the consequences of corrupted ideologies in today’s society such as ethnic cleansing and acts of terrorism.

And these are conveyed with a sense of deliberate detachment in the artist’s canvases. For instance, in his piece, “Where Were You In 92?”, from his series In the Future No One Will Have A Past (2007), the motif the artist uses repeatedly is actually taken from an online image of a window or jali, that was part of the Babri Masjid. It is used most effectively in that the viewer is faced with a cut-out of the jali, the front of which is painted black. The jali is placed in front of a reflective paper. What he/she sees is his own distorted and ambiguous reflection along with that of the paper used to make the jali. The paper used to make the cut-out is replete with imagery, both from the visual vocabulary that he has created through his paintings and from sources such as the Internet. Raja explains, “The images were taken from source material that was used for general and particular research for the show In the Future No One Will Have A Past, held simultaneously at the Envoy Gallery and Tilton Gallery, New York, in late 2007. It is a combination of very straightforward documentation of archival material of airports, for instance, as well as images of the Babri Masjid… (apart from) general images of conflict and attenuated political images from around the world taken from the news.” Powerful, in that it reconciles his interpretation of the world along with what are dominant mediums that constantly inundates the public with imagery and information, conditioning his and our view of the world. There is a sense of uncertainty at first and yet the viewer discovers an understated profoundness that is cleverly insinuated.

From an art historical point of view, this thought falls within the lineage of artistic movements that took place in Britain and America in the 1950s. Artists such as Hamilton and Warhol created works that reflected how the constant bombardment of images through the media actually desensitised the individual to the extent that he/she becomes impassive. What makes Raja’s works distinct is how he differs from his contemporaries who work within similar circumstances and conditions, seeking to convey comparable viewpoints. Artists such as Mariam Ghani and Chitra Ganesh have collaborated to create an ongoing project titled Index of the Disappeared, which deals with the events that occurred post-9/11, targeting Arab and South Asian immigrants. Others, such as Negar Ahkami, deal with similar subject matter as well as personal issues with regard to their identity as a second generation South Asian Muslims living in the United States.

The works of these artists are quite explicit and straightforward. This is where Raja differs, in that while the subject matter is quite similar, his stylistic evolution shows an intellectual rethinking on his part. Take his piece Nine/Ten for example, where Raja creates a delicate and fragile surface by generating a pattern using a “combination of images of various terror bombings of urban spaces that took place between the day of the attack on Babri Masjid and September 10th 2001.” By creating a repeated pattern of these attacks the artist seems to reflect on what has become of human nature — passive spectatorship. As we stand to look at his work within a gallery, engaging in its beauty of refined and symmetric design, we seem oblivious, at first, to the violent nature of the element that is being used to create the arrangement — bombings. However the work persuades you to pause for a moment and think about what it might stand for without being blatantly presumptuous. Raja’s paintings thereby invoke a deeper engagement on part of the viewer. Not that this makes the other artists’ works less engaging but it does give Raja’s works a lot more soul, making the experience thought-provoking.

Another aspect that is implicit in Raja’s work is the treatment of time and space. Once again, there is a reworking of art historical canons. It becomes apparent that the artist has progressed from working with domestic interiors to an amalgamation of similar intimate indoor elements with generic public spaces. Therefore, in works such as “In The Future No One Will Have A Past”, a work that shares the same title as the show itself, there is a reworking of literal and psychological space. The viewer comes face to face with an ambiguous and innately transitory space, in this case an airport. In a world where there is a constant need to define who we are and where we belong, Raja’s works do not seek to offer any answers. Instead he seems to be moving towards creating his own iconography that articulates the fleeting, fast-paced and consequently erratic lifestyles most choose to live by today.

Kanishka Raja’s most recent work, an installation titled “Indian Yellow”, reworks a lot of the iconography he has conceived during the course of his career. Probably for that simple reason the work does not exude the same kind of energy as his earlier compositions. This only highlights how every artist goes through various learning curves as their art evolves and styles mature. In Raja’s case, there is a definite sense that something positive and engaging will emerge in the future as his artistic explorations continue.

In terms of the market, Raja has not been seen as much as some of his contemporaries like Chitra Ganesh. As the artist himself admits, he wasn’t pushing to be part of the secondary market and takes things as it comes. It is interesting that he isn’t vying to be categorised as an Indian artist either, sharing similar concerns as Anish Kapoor, who also finds such labelling very restrictive in defining his place within the art world. Indeed, in today’s consumerist world, there is a concentrated bid to commodify art and therefore putting tags on artists is one way of creating a “brand” so to speak. That need not necessarily work in favour of what some artist’s consider themselves and their art to stand for. Kanishka Raja’s art certainly requires no label in order to stimulate its audience, from whom it seeks a powerful engagement.

Kanishka Raja was born in Calcutta in 1969. He received his MFA from Southern Methodist University in Dallas in 1995 and in 2000 he attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan, Maine. He has had exhibitions at Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Miami and Berlin. He will be showing for the first time in India at Gallery Mirchandani and Steinruecke in February 2009. The artist lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

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