Gallery Espace presents 'A Cry from the Narrow Between'
Mumbai-based artist Tejal Shah and Beijing-based artist Han Bing explore power, eroticism, passion and violence through their photographs, video installation, text-based works, sound works and performance art
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Han Bing - Sexual Fantasies of the Knife, Mating Season, No 2-1
-- Two young artists at the forefront of their respective generations in the contemporary art scenes of India and China explore power, eroticism, passion and violence through their multi-media artworks. While Mumbai-based artist Tejal Shah depicts the fantasies visualized by LGBTQI (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning and Intersex) people; Beijing-based artist Han Bing on the other hand explores the boundaries between profane and sacred; eroticizing ordinary, everyday objects-especially tools of manual labour, construction, and sources of sustenance.
Says Renu Modi, Director, Gallery Espace: "Both Tejal Shah and Han Bing through their multi-media artworks which includes photographs, video installation, text-based works, sound works and performance art attempt to modernize, urbanize and discipline unruly populations that transgress the dominant social norms."
In Tejal Shah's three large scale photographic series titled The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne/Burned on the water, the artist has photographed Laxmi, a very well known hijra and human rights activist based in Mumbai who had expressed the wish to become like Cleopatra. The second photograph, Southern Siren - Maheshwari is also about a hijra called Maheshwari in Mumbai who expressed a desire to become a South Indian film star and see herself in a song and dance sequence, romancing the hero and to be romanced by him in return. The third photograph You too can touch the moon - Yashoda with Krishna portrays Malini's desire to be a mother by using Raja Ravi Varma's painting 'Yashoda with Krishna' as a reference point. Her other works include 40 small scale bazaar-framed photos in 5x7, 6x8 and 8x10 size from behind the scenes of the shoots of the three large scale works. Her sound installation with text based works titled "What are You?" - Moving casually between staged performances, documentary, music video and appropriation, these portraits direct the viewer's attention to the physicality of several members of the hijra (transgender) community in the red-light district of Mumbai. The film moves into the documentation of one individual's experience of the gender reassignment process and concludes with slow dancing bodies moving with colorful, neo-op, go-go patterns inviting the viewer to the life embracing vitality of this community. The installation includes four beds, which are based on those found in local brothels arranged barrack style and painted in a distressed mauve finish.
On March 12, Han Bing will perform Dreams of a Lost Home: Mating Season, No. 12; where he will be joined by local people in this live art performative intervention that will take place in the centre of the market, just outside Gallery Espace. Han Bing questions the idea that the urbanization and "modernization" of society as unproblematic "progress," and reminds us of what is lost or destroyed to make way for the new. Holding chunks of rubble from demolished buildings, between clumps of cotton from quilts, and coils of somber, curling smoke from incense, Han Bing and local participants lie dreaming of their lost homes and estranged ways of life, and the cold, impersonal distances that the modern city and lifestyle has created between people. The artist will also be showing performance photography from his Mating Season (2001) and Love in the Age of Big Construction (2006) series as well a video titled Love in the Age of Big Construction. The artist in this video asks the viewer to consider the rural people (whom we address as dirty, low-class and uncivilized migrant labourers) who without educational opportunities, start-up resources, obscene work hours, unsafe conditions and unreliable pay; use their bodies as an altar upon which they offer the nation its fantasy of urbanized modernity but, the city in return has nothing but contempt for them and their sacrifices. Han Bing's video thus, is a sort of secular prayer to all those construction workers.
Notes to Editor
About Han Bing - Born in Jiangsu, China; the artist grew up in an impoverished village in rural China and studied art at Xuzhou Normal University and the Chinese Central Academy of Fine Art. Exploring the struggles and desires of ordinary people in China's "theater of modernization," he employs photography, video, multimedia installation, performance art and public interventions, as well as, sculpture and painting, to invert quotidian practice, reinvent everyday objects, explore the paradoxes of desire, and ask us to rethink the order of things. He has shown worldwide in Asia, US, Europe and the Middle East.
About Tejal Shah - Born in 1979, she is a visual artist working with video, photography and installation. Her work, like herself, is feminist, queer and political. She has exhibited widely in museums, galleries and film festivals including, Tate Modern (London), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Brooklyn Museum (New York) and National Gallery of Modern Art (Bombay). In 2003, she co-founded, organised and curated Larzish - India's 1st International Film Festival of Sexuality and Gender Plurality. She works out of her laptop and Bombay city.
About Gallery Espace - Established in New Delhi (India), in 1989 by Renu Modi with an exhibition of autobiographical works of MF Husain. he gallery's endeavour has always been on representing artists who concern themselves in the realization of work dealing with issues reflecting contemporary society's concerns; documenting today's reality. rom its early inception when the circulation of art was limited to informal efforts, Espace has constantly traversed borders and boundaries, showcasing the art of primarily Indian artists from multiple generations in diverse mediums. Efforts through the early and mid 1990s were concentrated on anticipating trends, spotting latent talent and giving a much-needed platform to many previously unknown talents (Subodh Gupta- Group Show (1991) Solo Show (1993); Ashim Purkayasta - Young Contemporaries (1995), Solo Show (1999) - some artists who today rank amongst the most prolific of the younger generation. Today, Espace is dedicated and aims towards giving a much-well-deserved and widespread visibility to its artists.
