Caught in a net between the virtual and the real
At first glance the eyes are drawn upwards at the dishevelled mosquito nets, angularly criss-crossed at a measured distance from the ceiling, the lightness and permeability of the material creating an atmosphere of a shelter, fragile and malleable, it spreads outside its presupposed form and hence disrupts the rigidity of the architectonics of each room of the gallery. If taken in its geo-cultural significance, net of this kind connotes a protection against an anticipated and as such a constant threat of an apparent/palpable end. This notion of symptomatic existential vulnerability lies at the very core of Wakilur Rahman’s current exhibition, Self-quest in the time of Corona.
Wakil re-creates the interior of his home which turned into a sanctuary in the time of Corona. Being a global phenomenon, the state-stipulated preventive measures of ‘quarantine’, in effect, heralded a tacit herd-mentality while uniting the world populace beyond their (hegemonic) borders in varied states of fear and anxiety as well as equal measures of hope and optimism to tide over to a ‘revertible future’ – looking back to look into the future. Home became a hybrid space where the public body reconciles with its private, with the latter becoming the dominant avatar. Where one also could convalesce from the horrors of the outside, the imminent threat of peril, the death counts.
Dislodged from the regimentation of civic life, time slowed down, allowing room to take in the walled environment of a home where one is to spend or rather serve time for days on end. The physical dimensions of the rooms kept changing with the change in light. Corners standing out in sharp contrast or blurring away into obscurity. Which Wakil voyeurises and sets out to question the behaviour that regulates the organization of objects in architectonically designated spaces. Wakil’s current, physical re-iteration of an earlier ‘on-line’ exhibition spanning nearly two and a half months of the lockdown, manifests a celebration of a creative spur resulting in a crop of works quite distinct from his rest. On view is a slew of photographic images and installations created with contrasting materials, all simmering with a sinister undertone that wafts out of a mnemonic brew of a past, whose aftertaste still holds us hostage. The additional manipulations executed upon them are signs of a mind that seek refuge in patterns, shapes, forms, and predominantly in a rather poetic visual engagement with the play of light and shadow. Which goes to suggest that Wakil takes a keen interest in the sensory premises defined by the architecture of a space. At every turn of his visual realization of a perceived objective reality, there is an underpinning of conscious deliberation. He picks his subject with the intent of coalescing them into a narrative of one’s intimation of time within an intimate space.
The urgency of a sudden change in the way of life cast a mood less celebratory and more cautionary over a world gone awry. Though, battling the unique health-threat, in some degrees called for a regulated life-practice which meant also to some extent, a suspension of collective agency to a system of (capitalist) central control wagging its peremptory finger (from behind a mask of disproportionate institutional charity); the pursuit of a meaningful purpose became ever more insistent. As new rituals began to take centre-stage, partially based on the ancient wisdom of survival alongside that which is scientifically recommended; a premonition of a faith (beyond its religious stretch) in something magical enough to transform the existing order began to surface at the edge of our consciousness. The ecology of existence felt more expansive and vibrant, spreading itself across our known/unknown sense of affinity with the world around while in reality this very world continued to squeeze itself with much unease to fit within the four walls of our home. Amidst an experiential landscape which projects both our psycho-physical and political inadequacy, Wakil, as a highly motivated and ready-witted individual, who wears multiple quills to his cap as artist-curator-gallerist-academician-researcher began to explore the field of installation artwork using household objects ready at hand. His years of experience in curating exhibits came in handy, not to mention the luxury of time that felt more personal than ever, to tweak with the otherwise neglected ‘ready-mades’ to explore the workings of his sensorial experience of an object in space with an intention of transposing it outside its utilitarian valence.
Wakil’s exhibition unfolds more as a study in contrast, be it light and shade, or hard and soft-properties or principles of materials which, however not treated much as opposites but placed on a spectrum to suggest an alchemy or interaction at varied degrees. The framed images represent already and always an inter alia (among other things), letting the perceiving body off the hook to explore and indulge in free-associations. Geometric shapes against white tabula rasa is more redolent of suggestions than the grille of the window which meanders fluidly across the soft, wieldy curtain pulled over a sombre light of a withering afternoon. His exhibition is teeming with visual interests-the installation of shoes in circular, yet multi-dimensional formation, the jumble of paper shopping bags yawning cavernously under the studio light, or what resembles a fishing net pulled to a tethered end, weighed down with the bottom reaching for the ground, and to extend the visual field-the dark pair of pinned askew pants barely standing one-legged on the floor, surrendering to the pull of gravitation-all seem to point to a carefully honed down clinical study in the relational attributes determined by the materiality of objects in certain spatial contexts. Something that was brought to bear heavily on the possibilities of re-organizing the objects in the photographs in actual space of a gallery, that too exposed in all their vulnerabilities arising out of being affixed in a certain location exposed to a certain angle of natural and artificial light, not to forfeit the thought that without the aid of digital manipulations as well, these objects appear in all their glory to reclaim their spot (read space) in light (read time).
Wakil (re)created a quiet landscape of being in one’s own space. The yellow band of fabric swaying freely in the occasional wind, while confronting a cross shaped with suspended bags made of fabric indicates a playfulness with which he connects to the historical time via a kind of quirky representation. As he does to the works of artists from the global north (intentionally de-capitalized). The sub-text of politics of over-consumption or necro-politics that decides which lives are more dispensable, ‘inter alia’, undergirds that of the visual; here one should pause…
Suffice is to say, Wakilur Rahman pulled off one brilliant show!
Sharmillie Rahman