CONTEMP ART ‘12
THREE ARTISTS, THREE CITIES, THREE CONTINENTS: WENG FEN, HEMA UPADHYAY AND BODYS ISEK KINGELEZ MARK HAYWOOD Piero della Francesca’s Renaissance vision of the ideal city, La Città Ideale was painted around 1470 and is modelled on Urbino, a hilltop city in the Italian Marches, where the painting can still be viewed. The city’s salient features have changed little over the centuries since and in just a few minutes one can pass from viewing the Renaissance artist’s vision into the model city itself. It remains a world that is
Piero della Francesca, La Città Ideale, c. 1470 panel, 60 x 200 cm, Galleria Nazionale, Urbino ordered and readily comprehensible, and is a striking contrast to the metropolitan sublime of later centuries. Since the turn of the millennium there have been several international curatorial surveys that have used the metropolises as comparative exemplars of ongoing change. These have included Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis in 2001, which was the opening exhibition of London’s Tate Modern, Design Cities 1851-2008 at Istanbul Modern and in 20011 Paris-Delhi-Bombay at the Pompidou Centre. In February 2008 the United Nations’ Revision of World Urbanization Prospects predicted that by the end of that year, for the first time in human history, more than half the world’s population would be living in urban, rather than rural locations. It also forecast that by 2030 this number will have swollen to almost 5 billion, with urban growth concentrated in Africa and Asia. Hania Zlotnik, Director of the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), which prepared the report, noted that, ‘Although Asia and Africa are the least urbanized areas, they account for most of the urban population of the world.’(UN News Centre) Zlotnik’s prediction was not made in isolation, indeed there seems to be consensus amongst futurologists that the archetypal city of the twenty-first century will not be the nineteenth century European boulevarded ideal, nor the twentieth century modernist grid, but the seemingly chaotic megalopolis of the southern hemisphere. In light of these trends and forecasts it seems timely to compare three contemporary artists from China, India and Africa, each of whom makes large 13
CONTEMP ART ‘12
installations based on the burgeoning of local megacities. The artists are Weng Fen (China), Hema Upadhyay (India) and Bodys Isek Kingelez (Democratic Republic of the Congo). It will be argued that despite obvious similarities of subject and format, their works actually reflect very differing local concerns, values and visions of the future. The trajectory of Weng Fen’s career is set against the backdrop of his country’s shift from military to economic superpower. The artist, who is barely forty years old, has witnessed his birthplace of Hai-nan, the southernmost of China’s provinces change from a peripheral agricultural region into the country’s largest ‘special economic zone.’ Perhaps nowhere in China are these changes so marked as in this province, where the government has encouraged foreign investment and allowed the economy to burgeon through exposure to free market forces. Weng Fen’s large scale photographs and installations reflect this phenomenon in differing ways. The photographs depict the him or members of his family in shallow foreground space that is distinct from the main scene beyond. These people have their backs to the viewer and seem to be gazing into the distance. We can see what they are looking at, but we cannot see their faces, nor their expressions: they are ‘silent witnesses’.
Weng Fen, Bird’s Eye View – Shanghai, 2004, C-print, 160x200cms The foreground space, particularly the curved one of Birds Eye View: Shanghai evokes the viewing platform of the nineteenth century panorama. It is a separate space outside the scene, yet simultaneously enveloped by it. However unlike the spectators of the panorama, these people are both viewers of the scene and social participants within it. The foreground space in which they stand may be read as the 14
CONTEMP ART ‘12
present, and what lies beyond is the past, the future, or that which is unchanging. These three categories are evident in series such as Gazing at the Lake, Bird’s Eye View and Gazing at the Sea. Like many contemporary Chinese artists, Weng Fen has more than one characteristic style. He is not the only Chinese artist to make large scale installations of model cities, indeed it is a trope of recent Chinese art. However Weng Fen’s work in this genre is instantly recognisable by being constructed with thousands of eggs. These works are not just visually different to his photographs, but reflect a more charged aspect of the Chinese economic boom. Building with Eggs (2005) took its title and medium from an ancient Chinese phrase to describe a potentially dangerous situation - ‘as precarious as a pile of eggs.’ (Gu Zhengqing, 2010) The work, which took nine months to complete, consists of about ten thousand blown chicken eggs and slightly fewer duck and quail eggs. The format also evokes the sand table, a large scale model of terrain, once frequently used in Western military planning and still used by Chinese urban planners for idealised public displays of intended development projects. (ibid.)
Weng Fen, Building with Eggs, 2005, chicken, duck and quail eggs, 8x4x1 metres. The parents of the Indian artist Hema Uphardhyay, were economic migrants from Pakistan who had settled in the populous Gujerati city of Baroda (Vadodara). Upadhyay’s concern for the marginalised itinerant underclass of urban India thus reflects her family background. While it is difficult empathise with or envisage the attributes of the inhabitants of Weng Fen’s cities of eggs, one feels a sympathy for the denizens of Uphadhyay’s informal settlements and her installations’ titles give a hint of their resourcefulness. Where the bee sucks, there suck I work is from Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest where the tiny fairy, Ariel, has been imprisoned by the magician, Prospero, but uses wit and intelligence to resolve the play’s various sub-plots. His reward is to be released from bondage and the following lines are a response to his new found freedom Where the bee sucks, there suck I; In a cowslip’s bell I lie; There I couch when owls do cry. 15
CONTEMP ART ‘12
On the bat’s back I do fly After summer merrily. Merrily, merrily shall I live now Under the blossom that hangs on the bough. Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act V, sc.i Upadhyay now lives in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) which is probably the fourth most populous city in the world. This installation is a model of the city’s Dahravi district which recently came to notice in the West as the setting for the movie Slum Dog Millionaire Since 2006 she has been making large scale models of Dahravi out of scraps of tin and cardboard, the very same materials from which the real Dahravi has been built. Recycling and alluding to the scale of that which needs to be recycled is a current trope of Indian, that was very evident in the Pompidou’s recent Paris-Mumbai exhibition.
Right: Hema Upadhyay, Think Left, Think Right, Think Low, Think Tight, Pompidou Centre, 2011. Left: detail. Dahravi’s population of over one million makes it the largest slum in Asia and the numbers continue to rise because it is a magnet for migrant workers from all over the Indian sub-continent. Of course this phenomenon is sadly far from unique, being repeated all over the developing world, as labour is drawn from the countryside to eke out a living in burgeoning barrios, favelas or shanty towns on the outer perimeters of the city. In many countries the process is exacerbated by government attempts to improve the quality of life for such communities by connecting them to electricity and water services, or as in South Africa, by replacing shacks with small standardised government houses. Sadly all these processes inevitably serve to suck further migrants into these ‘informal settlements’. Over time the phenomenon generates concentric rings of low quality habitation that resemble the growth rings of a tree. Bodys Isek Kingelez also works by recycling found materials, albeit with very 16
CONTEMP ART ‘12
different intentions and results. He was born in 1948 in the then Belgian Congo and since 1970 has been living in its former colonial capital, Leopoldville. The city was renamed Kinshasa in 1996 and today has a population of more than ten million, making it the second largest on the African continent after Cairo. In 1971 it became the capital of the republic of Zaire, but since 1997 the country has usually been known as either the DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo), or CongoKinshasa. This fluidity is a legacy of a nineteenth century colonial project that formally ended with the creation of a state as the size of Europe; it is an artificial creation and essentially ungovernable. Despite being the second largest city on the continent, Kinshasa is growing less rapidly than Africa’s third largest city, Lagos. Like Dahravi Kinshasa is a magnet for the rural poor, but it is also haemorrhaging other inhabitants due to the Congolese civil war which has endured for several decades. This dire situation is both a striking contrast to the science fiction installations of Kingelez and a key to understanding them. However despite many writer alluding to the latter creating a world of fantasy, it would be erroneous to assume his sources are entirely grounded in utopian escapism. Bodys Isek Kingelez, Kimbembele Ihunga, 1994. The Senegalese architect, Pierre Goudiaby Atepa wrote his 1973 degree thesis on the ideal African city. (Ropitault, 2008) Today he still retains an optimistic outlook for the future of African cities and the spirit of his architecture is clearly evident in the work of Kingelez. However whereas the former’s buildings, particularly his current plans for Dakar, often seem to be bombastic monuments to an ever more out-moded vision of the ideal, the latter’s buildings and cities are ones of the far distant future. Kingelez’s vision is either a future the artist will never see, or a fantasy of a future that will never come about. (Olalquiaga, 1993:17) One can draw admittedly limited parallels with the futuristic nostalgia of the US artist Kenny Scharf’s elegies to the science fiction future promised him by 1960s TV cartoons such as The Jetsons, but which never came to fruition in adulthood. Of course Kingelez’ situation is infinitely more serious - the Second Congo War, which officially ended in 2003 with a death toll of over five million, still continues as motley groups of guerrilla armies battle for control of this vast country. The Congo has been a killing ground for over a century and a half and Kingelez has been quoted as saying ‘his work “carries within it the sacrifice that offers the hope of a better future, of a better life, the good life.’ (Kingelez, 1989 cited in Patras, 17
CONTEMP ART ‘12
1993:61) Inevitably such a brief account is in danger of establishing over-simplistic differences, yet each of these artist’s work reflects a differing set of national circumstances and concerns. Weng Fen’s highly ordered Building with Eggs series built out of thousands of serial units mirrors the unique Chinese combination of laissez-faire capitalism and firm-handed central government planning. Their rigid geometry is at the other end of a metropolitan spectrum to the seeming chaos that belies the organic unity of Hema Upadhyay’s vast ‘informal settlements’. Like Upahyay Bodys Isek Kingelez recycles found materials and, as with both her and Weng Fen his models are of seemingly uninhabited cities. However he is the only one of the three to have attracted repeated comment on this aspect of his work. I feel this is not simply because his buildings are hermetically sealed and seemingly resistant to occupation. Instead titles such as Projet pour le Kinshasa du IIIe Milleniumin or La Ville de Sète en 3009, seem to subvert the seeming optimism of his vision by pushing these outcomes impossibly far into the future. In this respect he also differs from Weng Fen and Hema Upadhyay both of whom directly reflect current situations. By contrast peace in the Congo seems as remote as ever remote and the future Kingelez cities represent may be so distant that their inhabitants cannot be imagined. For these reasons despite being singularly impressed by the Kinshasa artist’s bravery and optimism, I find his joyful utopianism the bleakest of the visions from these three continents. Sources Printed Africa Remix: L’art contempourain d’un continent (Paris, Centre Pompidou, 2005) Blazwick, Nicola, (ed.) Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis (London, Tate Publishing, 2001) König, Kaspar (ed.) (2001) DC: Thomas Bayle, Bodys Isek Kingelez (Cologne, Museum Ludwig) Delisss, Clementine (ed.) Seven Stories about Modern Art in Africa (London Whitechapel Gallery, 1995) Frankel, David (ed.) Home and the World: Architectural Sculpture by Two Contemporary African Artists (New York, The Museum for African Art, 1993) Njami, Simon (ed.) Africa Remix: Contemporary Art of a Continent (Johannesburg Art Gallery, 2007) Njami, Simon (2007) Chaos and Metamorphosis in Njami (ed.) pp.12-21 Haywood, Mark (2012) ‘Return of the Silent Traveller’ in Huang (ed.) The Reception of Chinese Art in the West (Cambridge Scholars Press) publication late 2012 Jongbloed, Marjorie (2001) Thomas Bayle and Bodys Isek Kingelez: Architecture Between Fantasy and Reality in König (ed.) pp.13-16. Kapur, Geeta and Rajahdhyaksa, Ashish (2001) Bombay/Mumbai 1991-2001 in Blazwick (ed.) pp.16-41. Olalquiaga, Celeste (1993)‘Home is Where the Art is’ in Frankel (ed.) pp.15-20 Patras, Jean-Marc (1993) ‘Bodys Isek Kingelez – “Extreme Maquettes”’ in Frankel (ed.) pp.37-64 18
CONTEMP ART ‘12
Serageldin, Ismail (1993) Cultural Continuity and Cultural Authenticity in Frankel (ed.) pp.21-28 Vine, Richard (2008) New China, New Art (New York, Prestel, 2008) Weng Fen (2007) Weng Peijun’s Heaven: Return of the Silent Traveller Lake District Project (Madrid, Galeria Moriarty) Electronic Benin 2059 online http://www.fondationzinsou.org/FondationZinsou/ Benin_2059_English.html avail. 12/2/12 Bodys Isek Kingelez http://www.culturebase.net/artist.php?210 avail. 12/2/12 Gu Zhengqing (2010) ‘Weng Fen’s Beautiful New World: on his Installation Building with Eggs.’ Online http://www.artlinkart.com/en/exhibition/overview/ f0caxwro avail. 12/2/12 Ropitault, Mathieu (2008) ‘Pierre Goudiaby Atepa I Senegalese Architect’ in African Artists, online http://africanartists.blogspot.com/2008/06/pierre-goudiabyatepa-senegalese.html avail. 12/2/12 Ting Selina (2011) ‘Interview: Hema Upadhyay’, InitiaArt Magazine online http://www.initiartmagazine.com/interview.php?IVarchive=40 avail.6/3/12 UN News Centre,‘Half of global population will live in cities by end of this year, predicts UN’ online http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=25762 avail: 1/12/2011
19