SOLO EXHIBITION
SOLO EXHIBITION
SOLO EXHIBITION
The World's Leading Contemporary Fine Art Gallery
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The World's Leading Contemporary Fine Art Gallery
Pritika
Chowdhry
UNITED STATES
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“And this is why I make this work. It is that small crack, covered over by silence.”
"BROKEN COLUMN: THE MONUMENTS OF FORGETTING"
The Sites Of Memory
This is an ongoing site-specific, research-based art project that interrogates the role of public monuments in the formation of collective memory. The primary sites of my research are the Jallianwallan Bagh memorial in Punjab, India; the Minar-e-Pakistan memorial, in Lahore, Pakistan; and the Martyred Intellectuals monument in Rayer Bazar, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Latex cast of a section of the Minar-e-Pakistan, in Lahore, Pakistan.
These sites of memory or lieux de memoire in Pierre Nora’s words are rich with collective memories of the Partitions of 1947 and 1971. In addition, certain historical objects from these countries have also been included in this project as objects of memory. (Nora, 1989)
Casts of sections of the Soap Factory in Minneapolis, are also subversively included in this installation to localize this work here in the US. (This project was exhibited as a whole, in the Soap Factory in 2014, and the project greatly benefitted from their support).
Installation view of the Broken Column work at the Soap Factory, in Minneapolis.
COUNTER-MEMORY
This project investigates how collective memories of the partitions of 1947 and 1971 are made legible or erased through these monuments. These relational sites of memory are architectural palimpsests where memories of multiple events have sedimented over time. These national monuments are complicit in creating a narrative that aggrandizes the nation.
“The skin-like materials make the “body” of the monument accessible in a corporeal manner.”
As significant as these monuments are to the collective memories of the two partitions and the three nations, they fail to acknowledge or memorialize the trauma that the women of the three countries endured during these violent events. The elision of this trauma forms the counter-memory that hangs heavy in these monuments.
Michel Foucault coined the term, “Counter-Memory” to describe a modality of history that opposes history as knowledge or history as truth. For Foucault, counter-memory was an act of resistance in which one critically examines history and excavates the narratives that have been subjugated. (Foucault, 1977)
James E. Young describes an anti-memorial as, “Anti-memorials aim not to console but to provoke, not to remain fixed but to change, not to be everlasting but to disappear, not to be ignored by passers-by but to demand interaction, not to remain pristine but to invite their own violation and not to accept graciously the burden of memory but to drop it at the public’s feet.” (Germany’s Memorial Question: Memory, CounterMemory, and the End of the Monument, Fall 1997)
THE MEMORY TRIAD
The monuments are completely separate from each other geographically and politically, and indeed function in contradiction to each other as they each imprint the nationalistic version of collective memory of each nation. However, these latex panels are now dislodged from their original geographical and architectural context. An installation comprising of all these panels in one location is then able to create a metaphoric triangulation of the counter-memories of these three sites of memory.
Latex cast of a section of the Martyred Intellectuals Monument, in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
“In this visceral and abject form, these casts are able to allude to the counter-memories that are elided from these monuments and are thus able to function as an anti-memorial.”
Silicone cast of a section of the Minar-e-Pakistan, in Lahore, Pakistan.
Hence, this anti-memorial is able to function as a “memory triad” despite the geographical and political disconnect between these monuments and the conflicting nationalist politics of the countries in which they exist. This triangulation was never the original intent of these monuments. In their anti-monumentalism, this work connects as well as exceeds each individual monument’s historical context.
Latex cast of a section of the Martyred Intellectuals Monument, in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
ATTIA HOSSAIN’S SUNLIGHT ON A BROKEN COLUMN
The title of this project, “Broken Column,” is an intertextual reference to Attia Hossain’s novel, “Sunlight on a Broken Column.” The novel is a beautiful work about the coming of age of a young Muslim girl in the turbulent times of the Partition in Lucknow, in India. The author was also a Muslim woman, and I felt it offered a particularly poignant intertextual reference for my project which is about the counter-memory of what Hindu and Muslim women endured in the Partition.
Latex cast of a section of the Minar-e-Pakistan, in Lahore, Pakistan.
As per Wikipedia, “Intertextuality is the shaping of a text's meaning by another text. It is the interconnection between similar or related works of literature that reflect and influence an audience's interpretation of the text. Intertextuality is the relation between texts that are inflicted by means of quotations and allusion.” (Intertextuality)
I often name my works in this way, to make intertextual references to a literary work, to shape the meaning of my work in certain ways.
Silicone cast of a section of the Minar-e-Pakistan, in Lahore, Pakistan.
“This anti-memorial is able to function as a “memory triad” despite the geographical and political disconnect…”
Close-up of latex cast of a section of the Minar-e-Pakistan, in Lahore, Pakistan.
URVASHI BUTALIA’S THE OTHER SIDE OF SILENCE
The other work I want to mention here is “The Other Side of Silence” by Urvashi Butalia. This work is absolutely remarkable in its path-breaking feminist historiography of the Partition. I want to mention just one passage here, that to me is the most poetic description of counter-memory.
Latex cast of a section of the Soap Factory, in Minneapolis, USA.
She is narrating one of her many interviews with survivors of the Partition, with a family that had lost many family members and two of their sisters had been abducted. Throughout the interview, they did not mention the sisters. And Butalia describes it thus, “…it struck me that that awkward silence, that hesitant phrase was perhaps where the disappearance of the two sisters lay hidden: in a small crack, covered over by silence.”
Bibliography
Nora, P. (1989). Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire. Representations. Representations, 7-24.
Foucault, M. (1977). NIetzche, Genealogy, History. In D. F. Bouchard, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice (p. 160). Cornell University Press.
Germany’s Memorial Question: Memory, CounterMemory, and the End of the Monument. (Fall 1997). The South Atlantic Quarterly, vol 96, no 4, 855.
(n.d.). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intertextuality
(2000). In U. Butalia, The Other Side of Silence (p. 106). Duke University Press.
Various latex casts of historical objects from the Liberation War Museum, in Dhaka, Bangladesh.