<b>Kishore Singh:</b> Hindi Chini <i>bhai bhai</i>

China is the world's art powerhouse but Chinese interest in Indian art has been negligible so far

The tail-end of 2016 has seen India and China embrace in surprising and unexpected familiarity in the cosmos of art amidst everything from border tension to socio-political sabre-rattling. As a result of the tension, India’s achievements in the arena of art have gone unnoticed and largely unfeted.

On November 12, the Shanghai Biennale, a state-owned event, opened at its impressive Power Station of Art with an Indian curatorial collective, Raqs Media, doing the honours. Titled Why Not Ask Again?, the biennale investigates artistic exchanges within the region as opposed to the more usual East-West collaborations with the former never quite occupying the high ground of the latter. With Asia tilting the world’s skew in the 21st century, the partnership explores a rich cultural diversity, problems and solutions within its own geo-political matrix instead of relying on the Western or developed mode handed down to both India and China over the decades.

An Indian curatorial team could hardly leave out Indian artists, and of those who are represented at the Shanghai Biennale are Navjot Altaf, Gagandeep Singh, Desire Machine Collective, Surabhi Sharma, Tejaswini Niranjana, and my own and personal favourite, Rabin Mondal. The Gujral Art Foundation is supporting Indian artist Vishal Dhar on the occasion. Given its edgy and dark theme, it is appropriate that the curators have mixed everything from history to technology in an operatic manner, devising installations that work with traditional art, sound, light and performance to create one of the most vibrant theatres for art practice in the continent.

But even before Shanghai Biennale, the first Yinchuan Biennale in China that opened on September 9 roped in India’s Krishnamachari Bose as its curator. Bose comes with an enviable lineage. As he prepares for the third edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, of which he is a co-founder with Riyas Komu, to open on December 12, he was asked to curate the Yinchuan Biennale on an incredibly tight deadline at the province’s Museum of Contemporary Art located amidst the floodplains of the Yellow River. 

For a highly conceptual, almost dystopian exhibition, Bose chose science-driven projects along with installations and videos to create an extraordinary body of on-site works by 70 artists — 12 of them from China — from almost three dozen countries. India has been extremely insular about Chinese artists — but perhaps the reverse is also true — so many of those exhibited at the biennale would be unknown in India. But here was an Indian curator tying them up with a single strand, or thought, sewing together but also celebrating the dichotomies of the region.

China is the world’s art powerhouse, ahead even of the United States of America, or Europe, but Chinese interest in Indian art has been negligible so far. Exhibitions of Indian modern and contemporary art in China have been few and far in between, and though there was a sprinkling of Chinese art enthusiasts at the India Art Fair a couple of years ago, it has not materialised in any discernible gain for Indian art yet. But punters believe this is only a matter of time, especially as China’s appetite for art from its own region grows, increasing familiarity with Indian art, and Indian curators play a role in China’s art journey — a favour India is yet to return.  

It was at the turn of the last century that India established an art connection with China and Japan, resulting in the Bengal School of art at the time, but the relationship was never pursued to its logical conclusion. Not then, at any rate. Perhaps the time has come to follow up on that promise from long ago. 
 

Yinchuan Biennale: September 9 to December 18 Shanghai Biennale: November 12 to March 12, 2017

Kishore Singh is a Delhi-based writer and art critic. These views are personal and do not reflect those of the organisation with which he is associated