Tayeba Begum Lipi

TAYEBA BEGUM LIPI

TAYEBA BEGUM LIPI

GALLERY MISSION Established in 2000, Sundaram Tagore Gallery is devoted to examining the exchange of ideas between Western and non-Western cultures. We focus on developing exhibitions and hosting not-for-profit events that encourage spiritual, social and aesthetic dialogues. In a world where communication is instant and cultures are colliding and melding as never before, our goal is to provide venues for art that transcend boundaries of all sorts. With alliances across the globe, our interest in cross-cultural exchange extends beyond the visual arts into many other disciplines, including poetry, literature, performance art, film and music.

POSSESSED OBJECTS: TAYEBA BEGUM LIPI’S THINGS AND SELVES RACHEL BAUM …something enigmatic and enchanting…float[s] above the commodity, its anxiously foreign quality, its challenge to the meaningful arrangement of things, to the real, morality, utility, to all values… —Jean Baudrillard1 Anxiety and pleasure, eroticism and trauma, domesticity and estrangement, private experience and political engagement—these are the dualisms most frequently explored in descriptions of the work of Bangladeshi artist Tayeba Begum Lipi. I propose to supplement these descriptions with a theme that emerges obliquely through the wide range of works gathered in her exhibition at Sundaram Tagore Gallery. What’s striking about the artworks and their arrangement is the highlighting of a pattern heretofore rarely discussed in explanations of the artist’s projects—an exploration of the commodity and the relation of mass consumption to identity. While Lipi’s work speaks openly to gender and ethno-cultural matters, this specific presentation of objects from a variety of series suggests another register of meaning and relevance around globalization and its uneven, contradictory effects.

The theme of commodification is an aspect of the work that relates to the female body in a way that is still biographical to the artist, but also opens onto questions of selfhood, desire, and social agency that are recognizable across borders of cultural tradition and experience. The word “belonging” has at least two meanings, to be a rightful part of something or some place or to be the property of someone. Similarly “own” slides between “mine” or “ours” and property—having one’s “own” ideas and having claim over goods. The combination of products in Lipi’s artworks—apparel, machines, tools and furnishings— plays on both definitions. They seem to hold the intimate narratives of personal possessions even as they are props and accessories of a larger identity—a sexualized and materialistic bikini body or long-lashed eyes amid a luxuriously embellished veil.

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The body itself is absent from the works on exhibition. It feels carefully extracted, leaving many traces of rounded volumes and waiting voids in the forms and images that are left—a deeply dented pillow, bikinis and brassieres stretched over invisible curves, shoes open to missing feet, the domed crowns of wigs floating free of heads, and taut sari blouses subtly imprinted with two surreal sets of bosom, front and back, the improbable wearer having vanished. Even the less directly anatomical objects imply the presence of a body that has just slipped away and might return or that is still there as an unnerving energy, still claiming the commonplace things it has not fully abandoned—paintings of knives seemingly posing for their portraits, but also ready for a hovering unseen hand, an exercise machine that feels spookily inhabited even though it simulates a mass-produced middle-class vanity that is quite banal. A wheelchair and mattress have more obvious potential to become uncanny, but the interest of this exhibition is how the incorporeal body moves between all the works, handcuffs to handbag.

Part of this dynamic of familiarity and menace is due to the materials out of which most of the works are made: a metal fabric of conjoined razor blades or safety pins, carefully soldered into sinuous, detailed surfaces made to resemble cloth, leather, and elaborate technological objects. Much has already been written about the razor

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blade in Lipi’s work—the biographical and psychological resonances ranging from a long-forgotten memory of midwifery in a rural village where childbirth in the home involved rudimentary tools to a larger context of patriarchal violence. The safety pin is likewise forbidding in that it is associated with traditional female clothing (sari, veil) and therefore with the dangers of defying this traditional femininity, proper womanhood becoming woman as property.

In an interview the artist gave about this exhibition, Lipi describes first moving to Dhaka and then traveling for the first time to foreign cities, for instance to Dublin in her twenties for an artist residency. She notes that one of the most overwhelming aspects of international urban culture was the saturation of the public spaces with advertising and shopping. Consumerism appeared to be the primary mode of inhabiting these places and one can imagine the intensification of this impression in London or New York.

Many of the objects in the exhibition are on display as if for retail sale in a shop. Four razor-blade sari blouses are mounted on the wall in a row, the hollow, hard torso ambiguously neither a mannequin nor a garment; rows of shoes are arranged on floating plexi shelves associated

with high-end fashion merchandise; a rack of identical gold safety-pin bikinis on sleek hanger armatures evokes the staging of luxury goods in a minimalist couture setting; and razor-blade brassieres with crystal string ties lie on velvet inside a transparent showcase standing on a pedestal, like jewelry in an elite department store.

The shoes and a small gold purse (modeled on the artist’s own) have embossed metal brand labels of the artist’s sweeping signature and typeface name—a simulated corporate logo. What kind of commodities are these unusable accessories made out of tiny blades and pins?

The unease of imagining inserting a foot among the slicing edges gives these products a tinge of malice and suggests that there’s danger in the desire to fuse self and things. The lush copper wire wigs grouped on one wall suggest a similar conflict in that they appear as shiny and soft as synthetic hair, but must be quite sharp, thousands of supple, wavy needles. The wigs represent five distinct hairstyles of varying femininity, from a short puff of curls to long streaming movie-star waves. These allude to Lipi’s friendship and artistic collaboration with Bangladeshi transgender activists, especially a transwoman named Anonya who gave the artist a tour of her wardrobe and collection of beautifully made wigs, prized possessions crucial to her self-presentation. The title of this cluster of uncanny, luxuriant scalps is We can’t be the same,

however one of the lines of meaning that runs throughout the compilation of works in this exhibition is that we are all defined by the things through which we assemble our identity, from objects that represent brutal memories or fears to things with which we adorn ourselves in order to pass through the world as who we think we might be.

Rachel Baum is an assistant professor of the history of art at the Fashion Institute of Technology, SUNY. Dr. Baum focuses on modern and contemporary art with specializations in the work of Andy Warhol, political and cultural theory, and issues of gender and sexual identity. ______________ 1 From Jean Baudrillard, Fatal Strategies (1983/2008), as quoted in Peter Schwenger, The Tears of Things: Melancholy and Physical Objects (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), p. 79. The title of this essay is derived from one of Peter Schwenger’s chapter titles in this volume.

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Womanhood 2 2015, stainless steel razor blades, 17.7 x 13.7 x 15.7 inches/45 x 35 x 40 cm

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Recalling 3 2014, stainless steel razor blades, 11 x 9.1 x 21.3 inches/28 x 23 x 54 cm

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Miles After Miles 2015, stainless steel razor blades, 30 x 32 x 11 inches/76.2 x 81.3 x 27.9 cm

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My Pump Shoes 2016, brass made safety pins covered by electroless nickel immersion gold, each shoe 9 inches/22.9 cm long

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Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye 2015, stainless steel razor blades, 78.7 x 42.2 x 17.7 inches/200 x 125 x 20 cm

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I Do Not Wear This 2015, stainless steel razor blades and original stone, dimensions vary

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What Knife You Are 2014, acrylic and other materials, dimensions vary

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My Little Privacy 2016, brass made safety pins covered by electroless nickel immersion gold, 7 x 3 x 10 inches/17.8 x 7.6 x 25.4 cm

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Comfy Bikinis 2016, brass made safety pins covered by electroless nickel immersion gold, stainless steel and glass, 14.2 x 35.8 x 48 inches/36 x 91 x 122 cm

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Time Flies 2015, stainless steel razor blades, 49.2 x 49.2 x 17.7 inches/125 x 125 x 45 cm

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Agony 2015, stainless steel razor blades and stainless steel, dimensions vary

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We Can’t Be the Same 2015, copper wire, dimensions vary

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Trapped 5 & 6 2013, stainless steel razor blades, exposed drawing on mirror polished stainless steel, 29.9 x 29.9 inches/76 x 76 cm each

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TAYEBA BEGUM LIPI Tayeba Begum Lipi creates paintings, prints, videos and installations articulating themes of female marginality and the female body. Her sculptural works re-creating everyday objects including beds, bathtubs, strollers, wheelchairs, dressing tables and women’s undergarments use unexpected materials, such as safety pins and razor blades. This purposeful and provocative choice of materials speaks to the violence facing women in Bangladesh, as well as referencing tools used in childbirth in the more underdeveloped parts of the country.

In 2002 Lipi co-founded the Britto Arts Trust, Bangladesh’s first artist-run alternative arts platform dedicated to organizing exhibitions, encouraging intercultural dialogue and providing residencies for local artists.

Tayeba Begum Lipi completed a Master of Fine Arts in Drawing and Painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Dhaka, in 1993. In 2000 she was an artist-in-residence at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. She was awarded a Grand Prize at the 11th Asian Art Biennale Bangladesh 2003, Dhaka; and was the commissioner for the Pavilion of Bangladesh at the 54th International Art Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia, 2011; and one of the curators for the Kathmandu International Art Festival 2012. Lipi has exhibited at Alliance Française, Paris and the Bengal Gallery of Fine Arts, Dhaka. She also participated in the 14th Jakarta Biennale 2011, the Colombo Art Biennale, 2012, Sri Lanka, and Dhaka Art Summit 2012.

Born in Gaibandha, Bangladesh, 1969 | Lives and works in Dhaka

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President and curator: Sundaram Tagore Director, New York: Susan McCaffrey Director, Hong Kong: Faina Derman Director, Singapore: Melanie Taylor Exhibition coordinator and registrar: Julia Occhiogrosso Designer: Russell Whitehead Contributing editors: Kieran Doherty and Payal Uttam

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Cover: Recalling 3, 2014, stainless steel razor blades, 11 x 9.1 x 21.3 inches/28 x 23 x 54 cm