
(Published:
Art Etc. News & Views, 4(3), November, 2011: 6-8)
Originally
from Kolkata, Kanishka Raja now lives and works in
New York.
For more than a decade, his large, hybrid painting installations
--employing such diverse pictorial devices as Indian textile,
linguistic and miniature motifs; drastic perspectives; pop imagery
and surrealistic juxtapositions-- have received a fair amount of
critical acclaim. I sat down with this ambitious artist in his
Brooklyn
studio to talk about his art training, life in New York, and his views of contemporary art.
SKS: You
went to an art school here in the US?
KR: I
came to
Hampshire
College,
a private liberal arts college in Massachusetts, which I found
while looking at the catalogs at the USEFI in Kolkata. The school
stood out because not only did it have a liberal arts template,
but it allowed the possibility of designing your own curriculum,
and it was very openly structured
and geared toward people who wanted to design their own program of
study. And I had some sense that I was going to study something in
the arts, but I hadn’t quite figured it out.
SKS:
From there you went to
Dallas
for your MFA?
KR:
Eventually, yeah. I spent a year in between in Cal.
SKS: A
critic says that you were “miserable” after you went to Kolkata
after college. Why was that?
KR:
(Chuckles). Time and place! I think I had some kind of romantic
idea that I was going to finish my undergraduate studies and go to
Cal and be an artist; that I’d just show up and it’d all happen.
And as in most things like that, it doesn’t happen, no matter
where you are. I was miserable mainly -- at this point it sounds
like too harsh a word, but I think at that time I was pretty
miserable—because I had a hard time connecting with a community I
could identify with: the right contacts, the right people. At that
point I was already fairly committed to being an artist. I just
didn’t find the right critical and intellectual context; and so,
you know, it was...sort of… not interesting. Of course, most of
that was my fault. I didn’t go looking hard enough. So I did a
quick turnaround and said, to hell with this, I’m going back to
the States. But of course, that’s logistically hard. I had to find
a graduate school that I could attend for free and on a
scholarship, which is how I ended up in
Dallas.
SKS: How
do you think your work fits into the legacy of the “end of
painting” debate of the 1970s?
KR: It’s
interesting to think about. I became interested in painting fairly
quickly because when I was being trained as a student, it seemed
like the worst possible thing to do. It was perceived as the least
intellectually challenging, completely dead, moribund practice.
And so that was clearly an immediate attraction. I think most
artists have a contrarian strain in them that draws them into
looking for the kinds of things that are rejected wholesale in any
milieu. And I was interested in that immediately…okay, so why is
this not interesting? And I entered into a painting dialog through
that lens, in a way. I also
discovered fairly quickly that I was just interested in pictures;
that thinking about images and
their reception and dissemination in popular culture
interested me much more than thinking about objects. And
most importantly perhaps, I was very invested in trying to find
a place to enter the narrative as a brown artist within a
larger global context – I didn’t see too many people who looked
like me or shared my story in the books or museums, you know?
And I was starting to see how they were able to enter it via
various other avenues: through film, through installation, through
theory, but very rarely through painting. So it never felt to me
like I was contending with any “end of painting” moment
historically. On the contrary, it felt full of possibility.

SKS:
It’s obvious that your painting is not the kind that was rejected
in the 1970s. Your painting is full of fractures, indeterminacies,
and hybridities. So your training in history and theory must have
been very crucial to this?
KR:
Yeah. It absolutely was, especially when I was an undergraduate,
because I was working with high formalist kind of teachers, people
who were really invested in tracking
the legacy of Modernism, Abstract Expressionism and its
trajectory via Minimalism: you
know, the Robert Mangold, Brice Marden route of painting. And I
developed an instant resistance to that.
SKS:
Where did you find the turning point away from that Robert Mangold
and Brice Marden legacy?
KR: I
mean, just as a thing to resist, because within my undergraduate
program at least, it was presented as the only real viable
discourse. On the other hand, I’d come to New York occasionally
and walk around in Soho or go to MoMA, and suddenly there was a
multiplicity of other image-making strategies visible to
me: from Warhol and Rosenquist and these exuberantly de-skilled
paintings by Jean-Michel Basquiat, to the bewildering blown up
Marlboro ads of Richard Prince, all of which I thought were more
exciting visually than this other stuff I was being told was the
pinnacle in some way, like Agnes Martin!
SKS: So
when you were an undergraduate, you were already doing something
else with painting?
KR: Sure. I was
working in a very minimalist vocabulary, but working with scripts,
finding ways to turn the Devnagari script into a kind of minimal
language. I was making paintings that were essentially using these
kinds of marks. I was looking for ways to enter this larger
context. You know, I had a very simple, and on some level very
basic kind of ambition - I wanted to be the guy in the museum, but
as a painter, because I don’t see any of myself represented there.
As you can imagine, all the models of my education were pointing
toward a deeply western discourse.
SKS: So
when did your practice of appropriation begin?
KR: I
think probably after graduate school. All through graduate school
I was making much more abstract work. But my practice became more
and more invested in pattern and ornament. I was becoming
increasingly interested in ornament
as a place from which to enter another language of painting, and
thinking about repetition as an interesting way of working. And
from there it started to evolve into thinking about what it would
be like to start injecting imagery into the work that was more
pop-related.
SKS: One
critic says that your paintings are “cosmopolitan”, such as you
airport series. Is there any such thing as cosmopolitan painting?
KR:
(Laughs) I’m not sure that there is. But I know my experience has
always been urban, if nothing else, and that’s clearly something
I’m drawn to. And the way New York breeds a sense of
urbanity…that’s been an indirect influence certainly, but I’m not
sure what cosmopolitan painting means, to be honest.
SKS:
Most of your projects have quite elaborated titles. It’s obviously
deliberate, like a provocative, unfinished sentence or phrase.
KR: They
are points of entry for the viewer, in a way. For a long time, as
you’ve noticed, I used to title them fairly elaborately, and
treated them as suggestive ways to maybe read a group of images,
or a particular image. But at the same time they didn’t have very
much directly to do with the pictures. And that was deliberate,
because I’m not interested in directing your experience…
SKS: But
there is this play between visual experience and language, which
your teachers would definitely not endorse.
KR:
Yeah, that’s really not their kind of game. Most of one’s
experience as an artist –certainly it has been mine—is how to
unlearn what has been taught in the academic context.
SKS: So
how have you found the critique of your work so far in India and
abroad?
KR:
(Pause) Hard to generalize as such. My experience in India is
really hard to talk about generally, because it’s very much
through the lens of one show that I did, which was covered
extensively. But the conversations I had there, the questions
seemed to be much more directed toward establishing how I
positioned myself, questions about…do I see myself as a diasporic
artist, Indian artist, or an American artist…those kinds of
questions, which are really not that interesting to me. I have to
say that line of thinking seems fairly limited to me.
SKS:
Critics have mentioned that you don’t consider yourself part of
the south Asian diaspora.
KR: I
don’t think of it that much, to be honest.
SKS:
Why? Because you came here pretty much as an adult?
KR:
Sure. If I were a first generation American, that’d be a
completely different experience. So I think of myself most of the
time as a painter with a biography that includes growing up in
Calcutta
and who lives in New York and who is deeply invested in living in
New York.
I’m totally interested in and committed to and energized by New
York.
SKS: How
about the critical reception of your work in the US?
KR: I
don’t know how to answer that.
SKS: For
instance, do you find yourself misrepresented, overdetermined,
etc?
KR:
No…well, mostly no. Of course, there are things that get written
sometimes that are utter nonsense. On the other hand, for the most
part I’ve resisted a single-channel view of my experience.
SKS:
With contemporary artists of African origin, for instance, there
is often the essentialization that comes across in critiques,
interviews, catalog writing, etc.
KR: I
don’t necessarily distance myself from that, but I don’t encourage
it either. Of course, all artists want to resist essentialization,
and I think it becomes particularly important for non-white
artists to be aware of the dangers and pitfalls of the
possibilities of essentialization that exist constantly. But I
think it’s also imperative on you as the person setting that
context. Maybe I live under the delusion that I have a little more
control over it than I actually do. I think it’s important to
define your context as far as possible. And if I chose to set my
context specifically as a south Asian artist living in New York, I could. If I chose to claim a role specifically as a diasporic
artist, I could. I mean, I claim all of that.

SKS: But
sometimes the context you set for yourself is overridden by the
art establishment.
KR: It’s
a battle. It’s always going to be a battle. Academies and markets
are going to categorize you, and your job as an artist almost
always is to resist those categorizations. I think most artists
try to resist that. So yeah, I do try to resist it, always. At the
same time, I’m not interested in resisting it to the point of
obliterating that context, or claiming a position that doesn’t
acknowledge my position vis-à-vis the dominant culture. But it’s
like negotiating that little passageway, which is what I do in my
work anyway.
SKS:
It seems to me that in this media-saturated culture, images that
address social and political issues are too aestheticized to have
any political impact. They are promptly co-opted by the system.
What’s your take on that?
KR:
Well, I think the wrong assumption to make is that art’s role in a
culture has some sort of responsibility toward direct political
action. If you really are interested in political action, there
are plenty of other, far more effective ways to do that. So I
don’t think art quite works that way, and I think art’s most
essential role is as a kind of infection. Art tends to seep into
the cultural consciousness very tangentially, and so it should.
Having said that, I don’t disagree with you completely about the
fact that the market is so overwhelmingly dominant that it tends
to subsume everything and co-opt everything, so that the idea of a
resistance seems almost quaint. Art’s role is to filter through
these different processes. It’s actually the one place where the
trickle-down theory does work, and I think for that reason alone
it becomes highly effective. It’s absolutely vital for young
students to grapple with that question, to confront that.
SKS:
Just as there is the discourse of the art world that determines
success and quality, there is also the artist working in his
studio, which, though very much a part of that larger discourse,
is also about one’s intimate interaction with his work. This is
the reason the romanticism of being an artist still persists. I
wonder where you belong in all this.
KR: I
think it ends up being a model for freedom. It is a kind of
romantic appeal, but it also has a dangerous appeal that both
frightens and pisses people off; because this model, which I’ve
chosen very specifically, is very threatening to a social
structure because I’m sort of arguing here for the freedom to come
into the studio and **** around! That’s not what a social order
wants to see in its citizens. Like science and religion, art is a
way of thinking about the world.
SKS:
Which has nothing necessarily to do with success?
KR: That
maybe is a corollary to it; but at the core, no! Does science have
anything to do with success at its core? No. But nonetheless
scientists have to fight for grants and look for funding everyday,
don’t they?
SKS:
Say, Jeff Koons, who has played with this idea all his life. Some
people get very uncomfortable with it. They say he is just
recycling kitsch, which makes serious art trivial.
KR: I
think that’s what makes it serious. He is able to address all
those contradictory forces, and that’s what is marvelous about it.
If thirty years after he became an art superstar he still pisses
people off, then something’s going on there that’s worth thinking
about. Something’s going on there in your relationship with
culture at large, if it makes you uncomfortable.
SKS:
What is it about the global art scene that intrigues you,
acknowledging that it’s not a monolithic thing?
KR: In
my trajectory as an artist I’ve witnessed a massive expansion of
the parameters of what constitutes mainstream discourse, which I
think is fantastic. None of this existed when I was a student.
That’s a pretty remarkable moment to live in.
SKS: You
said before that you’re deeply invested in living in New York. But
as you know, New York has a history of exerting its power over the
mainstream discourse of art. Yet we’ve been saying since the 1980s
that the art world had become decenetered, and that New York isn’t
the center any more. Talk to me about that.
KR: I’m
invested in living here not necessarily in the context of the art
world, but in the continuing relevance of the immigrant New York,
as the place of arrival, the place
of fulfillment, due to which New York continues to occupy a
central place, and the way the city as an organism finds ways to
negotiate, absorb, and resist those influxes.
SKS: So
how does that reflect in
New York’s
presence as an art hub today, as opposed to thirty or forty years
ago?
KR: I
know just from my experience that there are far more working
artists here from other parts of the world, like me, from the
non-western world, than there were forty years ago. It continues
to be both a viable and an unsustainable place, because as we all
know, it’s no joke living in this city.
SKS: But
apart from that, what about its power to say the final word about
art?
KR: I
don’t believe it holds that singular authority any more, and I
think most people don’t believe it. And I think that is a very
good thing. Of course, there are people who would still
argue to the contrary, but mostly they are not relevant. And I
just want to emphasize that it’s better, working as an artist, not
to be operating from a position of total and complete authority.
SKS: In
your experience, how have you found the relation between the
artists and the art writer in the current art discourse?
KR: I
think it depends. It can be very symbiotic. A discourse between
critical writers and practitioners is important, because it allows
for the conversation to occur at a more substantive level. I don’t
think they should be separated, if that’s what you’re asking.
SKS:
Barnett Newman once said that he hated every critic on this
planet. Ironically, he didn’t even like Greenberg, who championed
abstract expressionism.
KR:
That’s a different model of thinking, isn’t it? Modernism operated
very much from a position of the artist as the creator with a
capital C, standing outside and above whatever cultural milieu
they worked in. And that’s just not a very valid model any more,
obviously. It’s been thoroughly demystified. I don’t think
practice should be led by theory; it should be the other way
around, from the artist’s perspective at least. But I don’t know
if I necessarily see an adversarial relationship between the
artist and the critic.
SKS:
What strikes you most about the current art scene in India?
KR: What
strikes me is that the most interesting work being done in India
is driven by performance, things that involve some aspect of
theatricality.
SKS: Do
you see, in the current globalizing phenomenon in India, a kind of
blind borrowing? New media, for instance, is a big trend.
KR:
That’s part of what I call a festivalism tendency; art that’s made
for large international festivals. And that’s not work I’m
interested in, for the most part. I think that is a
very different model of art making than what I am engaged
in. Festivalism, to me, is this expansive sense of production,
which involves outsourcing,
hiring…a small-scale Hollywood model, if you will; a model that
demands finding a lot of skilled labor and utilizing that to
produce these massive, spectacle-driven extravaganzas with
intimations of a very vaguely generalized, fuzzily political,
global arty discourse. Then there
is this other model that is about being an individual, and that’s
the model that I’m drawn to.
SKS:
What do you think about Kolkata’s current art scene?
KR: I
think it needs a larger infrastructure. It has no way for its
artists to find support. My brother’s gallery (Experimenter) plays
an important role in that.
SKS: Is
infrastructure the only thing that’s needed? What about most of
the art itself?
KR:
(Laughs loudly). You know, that’s another six-hour conversation!
I don’t think very much about it because I don’t find it that
interesting. I don’t have that deep knowledge of particular
artist’s practices, but I haven’t seen that much which excited me
to want to dig deeper.
SKS: Do
you have any shows planned in Kolkata?
KR: Not
at the moment. I hope it’ll happen at some point. I’m sure it
will, but at this point there’s no specific plan.
SKS: And
elsewhere in
India?
KR:
Couple of things in the pipeline next year that I can’t really
talk about yet.
SKS:
When you recycle these images, like Babri Mosque, etc., there must
be a different kind of reception in India. Has the specificity of
the images led to a critical conversation?
KR: No.
That’s why I don’t have much of a response to it. I’m often asked
this question: how is your work received in India? And my honest
answer is: I don’t know. Maybe they don’t think about it at all.
It hasn’t led to any kind of engaged critical conversation.
SKS: So
your work hasn’t been written about in Indian magazines?
KR: It
has. But what’s been written isn’t that interesting, to be honest
(laughs loudly). But you know, in all fairness, they are often
just reviews of shows and newspaper interviews. That’s necessary
and important writing, but it rarely leads to any substantive
engagement with the work. For any real art structure to thrive
anywhere, the writing has to be a critical component. And I think
that is still evolving in India.
Brooklyn
Monday, May 23, 2011.
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