Laura Weinstein talks about the relationship between South Asian and Islamic art, and the importance of a new installation by contemporary Indian artist Subodh Gupta.
You’re in the process of reinstalling the Islamic gallery. Could you talk about the importance of tying in South Asian art to Islamic objects?
There have been Muslims in India since the 7th century, which is the century in which Islam itself began. South Asia has therefore been home to Islamic cultures for 14 centuries. At one time the story of Islamic art was told in museums as if it only existed in the Middle East, but in order to do justice to its depth and breadth, we must look to India and Pakistan, to Indonesia, and even to the United States. So we need art from South Asia in our Arts of Islamic Cultures gallery, and similarly we need Islamic objects in the South and Southeast Asian art galleries.
This is messy, perhaps, but so is culture! It doesn’t abide by the lines we draw on maps.
Can you give us some background on the contemporary installation by Subodh Gupta in the South and Southeast Asian Art Gallery?
Subodh Gupta is an artist who grew up in rural India but left it behind for a megalopolis when he sought a career as an artist. He makes work that questions the way people valorize village life and rural culture in India today, even while the country urbanizes at an astonishing rate.
On one hand, Gupta himself is emotionally attached to the simple and beautiful objects, especially those relating to food, that are used in rural settings even today. By making sculptures out of these objects and putting them in museums, he is asking us to consider their meaning, beauty, and even nobility. This resonates for me because it reminds me that the ancient and medieval objects in the gallery are not just sculptures. They are material manifestations of whole worlds of meaning unique to South Asia.
On the other hand, when Gupta makes these objects for display in a museum, he is also admitting that they are relics of a rapidly fading rural culture. This makes me think about how other sculptures in our gallery were once used, worshipped, and viewed on a daily basis by people merely going about their business. They too are relics of a disappeared past. I am left with a sense of curiosity about what is around me in this and other galleries. Who decided to keep all these things? Do we still agree that these are the right things to keep? What is being ignored and allowed to disappear? How do I feel about all that?
What led you to Islamic and South Asian Art at the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±ÏÖ³¡Ö±²¥?
This is a long story. In fact, it is many stories. One of them is that in 1999 I spent a junior semester in college in Jaipur, India, living with a Muslim family. I became fascinated by the idea that Islamic cultures had moved across continents, shifting constantly to accommodate and adapt to local customs and peoples and ideas. Since then I have tried to look at that intersection of Islamic and Indic cultures and explore how art reflects that borderland. The °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±ÏÖ³¡Ö±²¥ is an excellent place to study this because we have rich collections of South Asian Islamic art, especially paintings and textiles made during the period of the Mughal Empire.
What is your favorite piece in the museum outside of your own department?
An Etruscan sarcophagus [whose lid depicts a portrait of a husband and wife embracing]. This object touches me in a place that is not cerebral at all, which you might notice is quite different from the way I respond to and approach South Asian and Islamic art. Simply put, I cry when I see it. It speaks to me of love, and also sadness. I don’t know of any other object that communicates so directly the power of these basic facets of human life.
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