Acts of Occupation

Waswo X. Waswo

Waswo X. Waswo probes the shifting boundaries of the collaboration of different minds behind the exhibition “Sleeping through the Museum”.

Collabor ation:
1. The act of working with another or others on a joint project
2. Something created by working jointly with another or others
3. The act of cooperating as a traitor, especially with an enemy occupying one’s own country -Collins World English Dictionary

It’s interesting to note that the etymology of the word “collaboration” reveals its original negative connotation, a meaning which lingers to this day in military parlance. To “collaborate” was to cooperate with an invader. Today’s artworld places a far more positive meaning to the word, filling it with feelings of mutual interest in work,coupled with sincere engagement and respectful overlap of concepts and techniques. Yet even in this new and completely inverted sense of the word, notions of invasion/occupation and boundary cannot be dismissed. A short time back I posted a detail from one of the miniature paintings I did with R. Vijay on Facebook, crediting it as usual “Waswo X. Waswo and R. Vijay”. Unaware of our work, a young woman in the UK asked, “Wow, how do you do that? Do you both paint together at the same time?” The question made me laugh out loud, though a second later I realized it was a very serious question that in fact needed an answer, especially since miniature arkana traditions often relied upon splitting talents between background painters, figure painters, face painters and border painters. Contemporary miniaturists such as the Singh Twins have actually been known to paint on a work simultaneously.

The details of my working relationship with Rakesh (R. Vijay) were too complex to address on Facebook, but they did spur a need to define better the various types of collaborations I am involved with. The collaborative space R. Vijay and I mutually share can be viewed as a nebulous one inhabited by diametric signifiers such as onceptualist”/”painter”, “patron”/”artist”, “guru”/’chela”, “pardesi/desi” and so forth. In fact, much of this has lost significance in our actual practice of over eight years. If I remain the primary conceptualist, conveying a painting’s composition, feel and idea via quick scribbles and oral instruction, Rakesh responds with a corresponding input of composition and colour adjustments, minutiae of detailing and small cultural corrections that often elude me. The more we have worked together, the more he has imbued his own feelings and insights into our work. Thus the nature of our collaboration has tread a path of increased understanding in mutually entered territories with understood boundaries, assuming a confidence that has only come through long hours of dialogue in the practical working relationship (and friendship)between us.