- Venue
- Palazzo Benzon
- Location
- London
My East is Your West:
To unite: vb
1. to make or become an integrated whole or a unity; combine
2. to join, unify or be unified in purpose, action, beliefs, etc
3. to enter or cause to enter into an association or alliance
4. to adhere or cause to adhere; fuse
5. (tr) to possess or display (qualities) in combination or at the same time.
[from Late Latin ūnīre, from ūnus one]
My East is Your West, Collateral Event is showcased at la Biennale di Venezia in Palazzo Benzon. It has been commissioned by The Gujral Foundation and unites for the first time India and Pakistan in a shared exhibition by artists from both countries. Shilpa Gupta (Mumbai, India) and Rashid Rana, from (Lahore, Pakistan) each are exhibiting new works at the Palazzo Benzon, located in the centre of Venice on the Grand Canal. The show presents the Indian subcontinent as one region. Delivering a talk on 7th May Gupta, Rana and Naeem Mohaiemen, participated in ‘Imagined Cartographies’ which focused on the practice of contemporary art in South Asia.
My East is Your West was instigated by the artists’ desire to shift the historical relations between South Asia’s nation-states and consider the region as a new-shared ‘cultural cartography.’ Shilpa Gupta’s new series of works brings together four years of ongoing research in the India-Bangladesh borderlands and the world’s longest security barrier between two nation-states. The work is deeply emotive and offers narratives and insight into her research through humbling, human methods. She exhibits works ranging from installation, photography, video, text-based pieces, drawings, and performance.
By contracts, as I navigate Rashid Rana’s exhibition space, I feel exposed and watched. The artist presents an immersive setting across five rooms surveying the intimacies of presence, temporality and location as collective experience, applying digital printmaking, video and installation. The live stream video work, disrupts my experience and journey through the space, hesitantly, I persist. Produced in collaboration with the Lahore Biennale Foundation, the work transports me from Venice to Lahore in a disorientating interplay of settings.
Reflecting each distinctive practice, both artists explore what it means for people divided, a history which has been entangled in conflict. The works that bring to the foreground realities of the Indian subcontinent, Shilpa Gupta and Rashid Rana develop a material aesthetic that surveys the potential of a common shared-region.
