Tying the city together through art

Pakistani artist Rashid Rana curated his first significant show ‘Resemble Reassemble’ for Devi Foundation in 2010 where he faced the biggest challenge —to take art beyond ‘national’ boundaries — since the four-month long show featured works by 45 Pakistani contemporary artists. However, this time the challenge he has undertaken – being the curator for the maiden Lahore Biennale 2017 – is manifold in magnitude and scope. In a tete-e-tete with Metrolife, Rana, who will be exhibiting at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art(KNMA) in Delhi, tells Shilpa Raina about the challenges of donning the curatorial hat and the purpose art serves in the society.

Excerpts:
How do you see yourself in the role of curator?
All three roles that I take on —of an artist, art teacher and exhibition maker, are different forms of creation, but these roles are similar to curriculum making. In an art school, when I set up an assignment for students, I basically give them certain conditions through a set of instructions. But as an independent artist, I define the experiment for myself by setting certain conditions. Both these exercises come together when you are curating because then you are creating a set of variables for participating artists, which may ultimately result in experiments beyond the scope of what you had imagined.

What are the challenges?
The practice of an artist involves their own mind and they have artistic freedom. But as a curator you are relying on other people to implement your vision. But the exciting part is that many minds come together.  The exercise does offer a panoramic view of contemporaneity. Therefore, a curator is invested both in the execution of the event, as well, as its content.

How interactive do you think the city of Lahore will be to the concept of a biennale?
I would like to imagine the city as a loose conglomeration of various systems – be it financial, religious, political, social or cultural. These systems are of course, not autonomous, but intersect in many complicated ways. Suppose, an artist wants to do something with water bodies, they can work closely with the water management organisation. So we will need support from private and public organisations to make this happen.

A biennale is all about public art. What are your views on this?
Public art is a misnomer. The dichotomy between public and private spaces is often false, and such a neat categorisation isn’t truly possible. How do you, for example, categorise an artist’s studio, which is not an exhibitory space but is often populated by others? Similarly how do you categorise spaces of power such as a Parliament, which in theory belongs to the public and yet the public has very sparse physical access to it? How do you categorise a private room through which you may be Skyping to some sort of a public assembly? Therefore, while I shy away from the label of public art, I hope that by introspecting over the function of art and by imagining the city as a medium, we can engage with a pluralistic, flexible and dynamic idea of viewership.

How will you manage between biennale responsibilities and your upcoming solo show in the capital?
You can say that I have stressful year ahead of me, but over the years I have learned to multitask. I will be dealing with Biennale and other projects such as KNMA show simultaneously till early next year and then focus only on the biennial for the next eight to nine months.