Back To Busan

This weekend saw me return to the Busan MoMA, this time accompanied by my Australian friend, Melissa, to see a new traveling exhibition of modern Indian art entitled "Hungry God." At this point, I am even more unfamiliar with Indian art than I am with Korean art, so it was a real treat to get some exposure to it. As I've mentioned before, it is sometimes difficult to grasp the significance of works of art that inhabit different signification schemas than the ones the viewer is entwined in (perhaps some of my friends who are more attuned to these schemas could enlighten me?) This became immediately apparent to me as I entered the ground floor of the MoMA and was met by Nataraj Sharma's ode to the Indian independence movement (which turns 60 years old this year): a large rusted bus with a phonograph attached to the roof and pictures of the revolutionary leaders in the windows. Of course, I recognized Gandhi and Nehru in the driver's seats (which in and of itself says something), and I also recognized Subhas Gose, Tagore, Jinnah, and Patel, but the others, I am sad to say, I do not know. Another case of semiotic dysfluency occurred with Reena S. Kallat's "Penumbra," an alumnium bed frame suspended over the floor containing an arrangement of public officer's stamps. The stamps were all either white, green, or saffron-colored, so at least I recognized those as the colors of the Indian flag, but I could not make out what the shape they were arranged in was supposed to be. Upon looking at a political map of India when I returned home, I think it may have been in the shape of the state of Andhra Pradesh, but I can't be sure and I'm not certain what sort of significance that would have for the piece. Besides the cross-culturally confusing (yet beautiful) pieces, there were several other fantastic pieces in the exhibit, far too many to enumerate here so I will just point out my favorites. First, Tushar Joag's "Unicell" project, which took as its inspiration a recent land reclamation battle in Mumbai in which hundreds (perhaps thousands?) of citizens were given eviction notices to make way for the construction of Mumbai's "New Eden," which I think was supposed to be a series of condominium projects. In response, Joag's Unicell team constructed a replica of the iconic Flora Fountain and set about erecting and dismantling it in four (politically and historically significant) locations around Mumbai, in what I imagine was an attempt to show how the brains behind New Eden were treating Mumbai as if it was portable and malleable, but I could be wrong. My other favorites included two video installations, one called "Crossings" by Ranbir Kaleka and the other titled "Mother India" by Nalini Malani. The former involved an artistic process I've never seen before; Kaleka's piece had four screens, each with a video loop of a different actors overlaid on top of another video loop which kept shifting between typical Indian street scenes and more surreal imagery. In addition, Kaleka had painted silhouettes of each of the foreground videos onto the screens. Over the course of the loop, the actors move back and forth from screen to screen so that the painted silhouettes are temporarily emptied. The latter was a feminist indictment of the treatment of Indian women and how women's bodies had been appropriated for the inscription of the revolution. Complete with two quotes from Veena Das (hooray Anthropology!), Malani had erected five screens in a semi-circle, each of which alternated showing images of (among other things) women spinning thread during the days of the revolution, images of the goddess Lakshmi, and images of a young Indian girl in a sari (there was also a point when the Lakshmi images turned into Coca-Cola logos, and I'm not sure why), while the sounds of giggling and screaming women came from the speakers. Finally, I really liked Bharti Kher's pieces in which she had arranged thousands of bindis of different shapes and colors into geometric patterns in some cases and into what vaguely looked like figures in others. For some reason, it made me think of a more abstract, modernized version of some of Klimt's work.

Afterwards, Melissa and I headed down to Haeundae beach to (appropriately enough) an Indian restaurant called "Ganga" for lunch. I had the Paneer Butter Masala, which our one Indian restaurant in Ulsan doesn't offer. It was a nice ending to my latest outing to Busan.