Break Down – Rashid Rana Interview

Pakistani artist Rashid Rana’s interdisciplinary approach covers a multitude of mediums, that include video, photography and painting. Employing the very undoing of the photographic medium as the pivotal point from which many of his works are developed. Incredibly dynamic and purposely complex Rana engages with such an avast array of powerful and very pertinent ideas with such virtuosity that it is almost impossible to be unmoved by his approach.Conceiving of works that are wonderfully intricate for the constitution of their parts,Rana’s billboard style images read like documentary photography that wrestles with our understanding of the world. Yet his ambition for seeing everything in the round – of all of the component parts being visible at the same time, as French painter Georg Braque, or his contemporary Pablo Picasso have done at the turn of the last century; with their combined inventiveness of Cubism, explains Rana’s works are far more detailed and destabilising than at first they appear. Citing multiple narratives as a rewarding resource for his work. “Today, every image, idea and truth (be it part of ancient mythology or generated by the media) encompasses its opposite within itself. Thus, we live in a state of duality. This perpetual paradox, which permeates the outside world, is a feature for the internal self also. Hence, all our moves are made not in one upward direction – but in two opposing ones – simultaneously. This internal conflict, which translates formally into my work through mirror images, symmetry, and the grid/ matrix, underlies and pervades every topic I choose to explore”. Thus is it as if Rana’s understanding of reality is as complex and at conflict with itself, as the more physical disputes that are being played out between his and its neighbouring country. Going to say, “my work comes out of this interest in duality, and of the complexity of transcending the hard divides, we create in our perception of images. In dealing with these images, I attempt to translate the physical, psychological and temporal aspects of our current epoch into the idea of two-dimensionality; whether it be represented in the form of painting, photography, video, or sculpture.” Unquestionably devoted to art history and of details, Rana revels in the fragile infusion of social detritus and natural beauty, with works that are rich in spectacle.


In interview over the course of several years, Rashid Rana explores his motives, his personal ambition for contemporary art from Pakistan, of his reluctance to be preoccupied with cultural identity, and his comparing himself to footballer Christiano Ronaldo. As he continued to teach in Lahore, whilst being regarded as one of the leading artist’s of Lisson Gallery, London. And without ego or exaggeration, Rana eases into conversation about his studio, his work commitments, Lahore, his love of London,from the viewing room of the gallery to which he
now belongs.


Lisson (Gallery) was a coup for Rana, right about the time of his inclusion in Saatchi Gallery’s Empire Strikes Back exhibition in London in early 2010, where he was exhibited alongside Bharti Kher and Jitish Kallat, among others. When Rana, by virtue of Charles Saatchi’s rather idiosyncratic labelling of the works as ‘Indian’, was deservingly included in the club. Yet in discussion Rana sees such territorial politics as a little tiresome, as he doesn’t wish to dwell on his nationality, and neither does he want to discuss his Indianness or lack of it. Yet he is ready to acknowledge that Delhi was where he had his first major exhibition, showing with Nature Morte in 2004, explaining that India’s contemporary art scene is more sophisticated, and much more intuitive to international interests, that the Pakistani art scene isn’t right now. In a memorable conversation with Mehreen Rizvi Khursheed, previously of Bonham’s, London, we had discussed such cultural differences between India and Pakistan, and of how such provocations between countries have become consequential to what is happening artistically. Yet as Rana would wish, it is only when you let all of the politics, the cultural commentary, and geographical ills go, that his is truly an inspired voice of reason. His own country’s politics are for him a background noise to the greater polarities between people and place. As he insightfully explains, “for me, the social and political upheavals in Pakistan rarely interfere with my life or work. When they are incidents, one gets used to the situation and life continues. When there is a bomb explosion covered in the international news media, it may seem like the entire country is in chaos, when in actuality I may be going to work as part of my normal routine. Of course, the art infrastructure in India is much more developed and there are more avenues in which to work. Until now I have had no major issues that I have not been able to deal with while based in Pakistan. One has to understand their environment and learn to move forward and progress.


Interview

Rajesh Punj:

When I consider your pixilated photographic works, I think of your desire to unsettle the viewer out of their comfort zone. Are you seeking to break things up in order to break them down again?
Rashid Rana: I don’t think I have a desire to unsettle the viewer, it is more to do with taking fragments to create something very familiar, and unfamiliar at the same time. But when one looks at both the bigger and smaller picture together, it is then that their preconceived notions about certain phenomena are challenged. Then they make new connections and meanings through very familiar imagery.

I have been borrowing from broad visual culture since the mid-1990s when there was a shift in my approach to my practice. I made a conscious decision to borrow everything – starting from the images, to the titles for my work. I do not think it is so much to do with a greater reality and unreality, but more to do with reinventing through reality – and to show a kind of paradox that we fail to notice even though it is what makes us who we are.