Home and Displacement the19th Asian Art Biennale

Reflection of Home and Displacement in the Artworks at the19th Asian Art Biennale

Selima Quader Chowdhury

The 19th Asian Art Biennale was held in Dhaka, Bangladesh, between the 8th of December 2022 and the 13th of January 2023. The event featured paintings, prints, photographs, sculptures, installations, new media and performance art. On display were 649 artworks by 493 artists from 114 countries, including Bangladesh. Art from different cultures helps foster a sense of connectedness and cultural diffusion, and through the Asian Art Biennale many foreign influences have found their way into the contemporary art scene of Bangladesh, while artists from abroad have gained exposure to Bangladesh’s own cultural traditions. The theme of this year’s exhibition was Home and Displacement. Some migrants move from one place to another for a better life, for better economic opportunities, to join family members or to study, while others are forced to migrate to escape conflict, persecution or human rights violations, the adverse effects of climate change, natural disasters or other environmental factors. The 19th Asian Art Biennale sheds light on how artists respond to the trauma and agony of the displacement of migrants.

Bangladeshi artist Sanjib Datta’s work Images of Days and Nights in Eternal Journey evokes a sense of nostalgia. In Helen Taylor’s journal article “Refugees, The State and the Concept of Home”, she talks of situations in which refugees are forced to move from their home and settle down in new locations. Here, they often want to resurrect the ambience of their lost home through materials that are central to their experience of home. They might plant trees and flowers or cook food that evinces an emotional response that reminds them of their lost home. Datta uses old, flattened aluminium utensils extensively throughout the canvas, evoking poverty. These aluminium utensils have a powerful impact on the viewer, symbolising the food cooked by refugees to remind them of their physical home that they have left behind. The nostalgia for home is also apparent in the depiction of leaves painted in dull colours surrounding the head of a bearded old man at the bottom of the canvas. The man’s eyes are closed, and he seems dejected. Perhaps the texture and the scent of the herbs that he had planted are making him nostalgic for his home.

According to Elena, an Oxford university history student, refugee identity is complex, and is often formed by forms of transculturalism that involve the adoption of elements of the new culture of refugees’ host country as well as integrating aspects of their own traditional culture. This conflict of identity is apparent in one of the ‘Stories from My Surroundings’ series by Bangladeshi artist Jayatu Chakma. In this painting, Chakma shows a man wearing a loincloth and a red tie around his neck, which is obviously a western accessory. The red tie looks conspicuous against the pencil drawing and reminds the viewer of the cultural dissonance in the unusual choice of clothing, evoking a feeling that adopting elements from foreign culture undermines the cultural identity of the indigenous man. The agony of cultural bereavement is also vividly reflected in another image by Jayatu Chakma in which the head and torso of a man have been blurred by a splash of black water colour, while the figure’s legs have been highlighted with black paint marker pen. The splash of black watercolour that camouflages the head and torso shows the frustrations of the indigenous man, who has been uprooted from his land and is now suffering the loss of social structures, cultural values and identity.

Western Colonial discourses of the nineteenth century created a stereotypical image of non-European civilisations like the Middle East, Asia and North Africa as backward, underdeveloped, inferior and submissive while the west was seen as civilised, superior and enlightened in order to justify European colonialism. Africa was one of the main colonies of British Empire, where the British tried to spread Christianity and impose their culture and language while controlling the economy and territory of their colonies. The colonial discourses on Africa depicted Africans as dark, uncivilized, tribal and primitive and elevated the white colonisers into a position of rationality and racial superiority. During the British colonial rule in Africa in the late nineteenth century, African migration occurred due to forced labour, taxation and brutal treatment by their colonial masters. In “African Migrants in Spite of ‘Fortress’ Europe: An Essay on the Philosophy of Popular Culture”, scholar Martin Asiegbu comments that African migrants were perceived as a barbarian and an inferior race in contrast to the superiority of the Europeans.

German artist Franziska Fennert’s ‘Mengalir’(Flowing) is a mixed media work stitched in canvas featuring the juxtaposition of dark-skinned African migrant women of colonised African states with white women. The dichotomy of east and west in the colonial discourse is made apparent through the projection of the dark skin of an African woman denoting the east, while the fair complexion of the white woman signifies the west. Although the binary opposition between the east and west is made distinct through the skin colour of the women, the artwork deconstructs the contrasting representation of east and west, again showing the east as inferior to the west, as advocated in colonial literature. The African migrant woman is depicted in exactly the same manner as the white-skinned woman, with the same facial expression. Both faces are lifted upwards, they have the same hairstyle and the same accessories. The similar rendition of the white and black women resonates with the postcolonial theory of Palestinian-American professor of literature Edward Wadie Said, who argued that the west deliberately created a false image of the east by stereotyping their culture, values and traditions as inferior in order to justify their colonialism.

Italian artist Constantin Migliorini’s painting ‘Uncertainty’ depicts the massive dead body of a crucified Jesus Christ weighing down on two naked women on either side of him. The women are sitting on ordinary chairs, and the rough texture of jute on canvas and the use of dull colours and poor lighting in the interior space gives an impression of an old dingy warehouse. Although the women are nude, they lack the smooth, fleshy and voluptuous appeal prevalent in old masters paintings, and instead they look thin and have drooping breasts. The use of jute and the tinges of grey and brown on their bare bodies evokes dirt on skin, giving the impression that the refugee women have been abducted and sexually violated. Refugee women were indeed raped by men in their local communities. These men were authority figures as well as other refugees, and rape is usually planned as a weapon of domination and carried out without mercy.

The woman on the left of Jesus is putting her hand to her head in despair and her eyes are closed in shame at having to face the stigmatization of imposed Christianity and male dominance. However, the women to the right of Jesus returns the viewer’s gaze boldly, exuding a feminist consciousness that is reminiscent of the bold look of ‘Self Portrait as St. Catherine of Alexandria’ by Italian female Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi, who experienced the trauma of rape by her tutor and depicted tough women in order to defy her rape and torture.

Although the two naked women in Migliorini’s ‘Uncertainty’ appear skinny, weak and bear the demeanour of victims of sexual assault, at the same time they look powerful. They seem to be bearing the weight of the dead body of Christ, who is the central figure of Christianity and is worshipped by the majority of Christians as the incarnation of the son of God, thereby signifying power, authority and distinction. This offers a powerful representation of refugee women who played a significant role in building colonial spaces, in which refuges who refused to stay at camps because of the poor living conditions struggled to construct their own minority spaces in local urban settings. According to sociocultural anthropologist Malini Sur, women used their physical labour in the construction of buildings. In her MA thesis “Relocating Gendered Identity: A study of East Pakistani Women Refugees in Calcutta” she interviewed women who “recalled walking long distances to carry soil … and building their homes with their husbands and sons.”

Although refugee women continue to suffer marginalisation, sexual abuse and gender-based violence, migration also had a positive impact on women, as was the case in the partition of India in 1947. Scholar Archit Basu Guha-Choudhury, in her article “Engendered Freedom: Partition and East Bengali Migrant Women” discussed how the partition of 1947 brought economic freedom for Bengali migrant women. These women were disadvantaged because of their gender, and did not have access to the economic sphere which was the domain of men. Women stayed at home doing domestic work and raising children. When the partition led to displacement, many people left their homes and migrated to new locations to settle down, where they found themselves facing hardships and challenges in their new surroundings. The men, who had always been considered the breadwinners of the family, found that they needed financial support from their wives, which allowed Bengali migrant women enter the economic arena where they took jobs outside the home to earn a wage for their family while fulfilling their domestic duties.

In her work ‘Quarantine Diaries,Volition’, Mauritian artist Avilla Damar depicts naked women with horns. Some of these women are painted in sunset pink colour while pale blue and earthy colours are used to depict other women. Their breasts, navels and rolls of fat on their stomachs are highlighted in deep tones that repel any voyeuristic pleasure in the viewer. The desexualised bodies of the naked women make them appear powerful, while horns in general are associated with strength and power – and of course masculinity. According to the twentieth century tradition of Eastern European theatre and dance, “the nude figure symbolises the total freedom of the human form unencumbered by political repression.” The horns of the naked women in Avilla Damar’s painting represent the new economic power and the freedom enjoyed by Bengali migrant women as a consequence of displacement brought on by the partition of 1947.

The 19th Asian Art Biennale’s display of an array of artefacts has a powerful impact on the viewer, enabling them to experience the journey of a refugee. Sanjib Datta’s work ‘Images of Days and Nights in Eternal Journey’ allows the viewer to experience how the refugees made an effort to reproduce elements of their lost home by planting trees and cooking traditional food, while the work of Jayatu Chakma shows how the refugees struggled to negotiate their new and old identities as they grieved for the loss of their cultural values and identities. Meanwhile, Constantin Migliorini’s painting ‘Uncertainty’ reflects the sexual violence experienced by internally displaced women. Although women faced the hardship of forced migration, their movement also benefited them in some ways as it unshackled them from the restrictions of patriarchal society by giving them economic freedom. Avilla Damar’s work ‘Quarantine Diaries Volition’ vividly reflects the economic freedom that was enjoyed by Bengali migrant women, while Franziska Fennert’s ‘Mengalir/ Flowing’ dismantles the western stereotyping of Africa as primitive and backward that prevailed in colonial texts by depicting African immigrant women in exactly the same manner as white women who symbolise the west.