Venice se Lahore: The art that brings two countries together

Rana says the Venice se Lahore was envisioned when he and Feroze Gujral were at Venice Biennale in 2013

LAHORE:

“Rashid Rana is an energetic and productive representation of the new kind of art in Pakistan,” Nour Aslam, the Lahore Biennale Foundation programming director, said on Sunday.

She was introducing Rana ahead of a conversation with him at a session titled Transpositions: Venice se Lahore on the second day of Khayaal Festival. The talk revolved around his work, including that presented at the 56th Venice Biennale.



Aslam said Rana had taught arts at several Pakistani schools.

“The idea of Transpositions: Venice se Lahore was envisioned when Feroze Gujral and I were walking through various rooms at Venice Biennale in 2013 talking about the fact that both Pakistan and India did not have a pavilion there,” Rana said.

“Over the last 12 years, work from India has been displayed twice at the Biennale. Pakistan, probably, has never had a pavilion there since 1956.”

Rana said he believed that most artists and intellectuals did not subscribe to the idea of nation state that had been around for 200 years. “Through their work, artists like to defy this idea. At the same time, we see representation of countries at the Venice Biennale, the biggest art event in the world. I believe there is a contradiction here,” he said.



At the 2015 Biennale, Rana and Indian artist Shilpa Gupta had represented India and Pakistan through their work titled My East is Your West. “We tried to portray our work as the creation of artists from Lahore and Mumbai instead of India and Pakistan,” Rana said.

Rana’s work at the Biennale included photo-based pieces, video installations and photo sculptures. One of the rooms there had a camera allowing the visitors in Venice to see and interact with people in Lahore’s Liberty Market.

Rana said that in one of the rooms, he had tried to include the visitors into the ‘art work’ by showing their images in videos with a 20-second delay.

The Khayaal Festival ended on Sunday with a musical performance by the Meekal Hassan band.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 30^th,  2015.