by Jon Lackman | 26 October 2007 | Asia, Contemporary
In a recent issue of Art India, Beth Citron reports on “Elective Affinities, Constitutive Differences: Contemporary Art in Asia,” a three-day seminar held in Delhi in March “to motivate dialogue on a potential Delhi Biennale”:
Introductions by Parul Dave Mukherji and Geeta Kapur reflected on Edward Said’s Orientalism, with Mukherji emphasizing the need to critically consider “Asia” as a problematic … Rustom Bharucha’s trenchant remarks suggested that contemporary Asiacentricity or the framing of Asias conceived within the continent could operate like Eurocentrism to perpetuate cultural attitudes. He noted that presenting “Asian art” as a monolith elided inherent hypocrises and socio-political inequalities in the region … Santosh S.’s paper on “minoritarian aesthetics” elucidated the challenge of subalterns to overcome both the dominating Indian and global intelligentsias to participated in mainstream cultural practices … Girish Shahane offered the tension between Bharat (as rural, authentic nation) and India (as newer, urban civilization) to contextualize a changing balance between multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism … Roces noted elegantly that Asia is itself a linguistic artifact, an antique passed from collector to collector … Negar Azimi’s polemical engagement with the “ethnic” markers used to identify artists from the Middle East led to the interrogation of the utility of geographical bracketing … Criticisms of the problematics of Asian biennales may have proven too effective, as Geeta Kapur’s valedictory address noted. She said, “We seem to have talked ourselves out of the idea [of a Delhi Biennale].”
(On a related note, recent issues of Heterogénesis (55-56) and Artecubano (11:2) are devoted to discussing the 2006 Havana Biennial and the utility of biennials generally.)
