A Larger World
colonial period to the present day. The two exhibitions were
strikingly different: the more conventional survey ‘Across
ART CRITICISM
New approaches to exhibition-making in India
Oceans ...’ at odds with the curatorial approach of ‘No Parsi Is
an Island’.
In a recent article, the critic Deepika Sorabjee compared
‘Across Oceans ...’ to the more modest show ‘Nagas: The
Diorama as Identity, Ideology’, which was presented concurrently at the non-profit space Mumbai Art Room. Curated by
Kikrulhounyu Pappino, its sparse installation of works on
glass and photographs of dioramas explicitly questioned the
methods used to represent and document minority cultures in
museums. Unambiguous in its critique, ‘Nagas ...’ operated as
a necessary counterpoint to ‘Across Oceans ...’ by querying the
persistent investment in, and enduring validity of,
ethnographic forms of display. Adajania and Hoskote, too,
were sensitized to the limitations of ethnographic framing, and
decided to turn their invitation to participate in ‘No Parsi Is an
Island’ into an act of what Adajania defined ‘creative
opportunism’.
Adi Davierwalla, Many Headed Hydra, 1962. Courtesy: Zarine
Davierwalla.
While ‘No Parsi Is an Island’ was ostensibly a show of work by
artists hailing from a particular ethnic community, it strove to
Just as 2013 was coming to a close, two exhibitions, ‘Across
reveal the dynamic transactions initiated by those artists. By
Oceans and Flowing Silks: From Canton to Bombay 18th –
characterizing the Parsis as, in cultural theorist Homi K.
20th Centuries’ and ‘No Parsi Is an Island’, opened at the
Bhabha’s phrase, ‘inhabitants of the in-between’ – along with
National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) in Mumbai. The
the exhibition’s title, adapted from John Donne’s noted 1624
shows were organized to coincide with the 10th World
poem – the curators strove to rail against the commonly held
Zoroastrian Congress, which saw around 1,000 delegates
misconception that the Parsis are an insular group, focusing
gather in the city to discuss various issues currently affecting
instead on the cosmopolitan lives of the participating artists.
the Parsi community, such as its shrinking population.
To enliven this ‘amphitheatre of connections’, Adajania and
Hoskote scoured family archives and numerous private
Curated by Pheroza J. Godrej and Firoza Punthakey Mistree,
‘Across Oceans ...’ dominated most of the NGMA and
comprised an ethnographic display of textiles, furniture and
other artefacts that mapped out the Parsi communities’
historical trading ties with China. A smaller show, housed in
the museum’s rotunda, ‘No Parsi Is an Island’ was curated by
Nancy Adajania and Ranjit Hoskote, in collaboration with
Godrej, and focused on 14 Parsi artists active from the late
collections in order to incorporate material that underscored
the distinct character of each artist’s trajectory. The curators
also steadfastly avoided situating the exhibited works within
the recognized narrative of Indian art history; instead, they
focused on the artists themselves, their educational
backgrounds and personal friendships that contributed to
defining their evolving sense of self at home and abroad.
The greatest revelations in ‘No Parsi Is an Island’ were the
scrap metal and steel sculptures of Piloo Pochkhanawala and
Adi Davierwalla, both autodidacts who drew on the legacy of
20th century Western sculpture when forging their own
distinctive modernist idioms. As well as the finished
sculptures, the show included sketchbooks and journals – and,
in the case of Davierwalla, a selection of photographs from his
archive, in which he meticulously maintained a record of every
work he made. Other highlights were the weavings of Nelly
Sethna, who shared a fruitful association with Finnish
architect Eero Saarinen, and non-figurative painter Homi
Patel.
The decision to include the personal photographic archive of
Davierwalla alongside the children’s magazines that abstract
painter Mehlli Gobhai illustrated in the late 1960s and early
’70s, Shiavax Chavda’s research for the costumes for the
film Amrapali(1966) and the poetry of painter Gieve Patel – to
list but a few examples – was an attempt by the curators to
demonstrate these artists’ ‘expanded practices’. As Adajania
explained to me, they were able to ‘range across cultural fields
and political urgencies at large. Their ability to engage with
diverse economies of cultural production as producers, as
interlocutors, and as collaborators […] this is a major lesson
that Indian artists today could imbibe: that art is not confined
to a few institutions within the art market. To be truly
effective, the life of the imagination must surge across a
variety of spheres of human activity and expression.’
The ‘creative opportunism’ of ‘No Parsi Is an Island’ is
significant. Compellingly, it offered stratagems and ways to
negotiate with overarching and limiting institutional
frameworks by examining the strength of culturally received
histories, and thinking beyond location, community and
ethnicity, while celebrating the overlooked, forgotten and
marginalized.
Shanay Jhaveri
Shanay Jhaveri is a contributing editor of frieze and lives in
Mumbai, India, and London, uk.
Issue 162 , April 2014