Does India need a national pavilion at the Venice Biennale? Here’s a contrarian view

In our recent blog, we carried the opinion of noted contemporary artist Jitish Kallat who rued that India had no national pavilion at the prestigious Venice Biennale even as several of the world's tiniest nations have their very own government sanctioned pavilions. Art expert Tasneem Zakaria Mehta echoed the artist’s sentiments in a Times column. Now, noted cultural theorist and art critic Ranjit Hoskote has joined the debate.

In an article, titled ‘Patriotism and the art pavilion’ carried in the Times of India (9 August 2009), he asks whether India really needs to have a national pavilion at the Biennale. I would offer a contrarian view, he hastens to add.

Here is what Ranjit Hoskote has to say on the issue: “We should not contemplate such a pavilion until we are able to demonstrate the self-critical maturity necessary to transcend local politics and also sustain it at an international level of excellence.”

He explains: “A national pavilion in Venice would register a triumphal note of arrival both for the Indian nation-state and for the Indian art world. But it must embody the soft-power ambitions of the former and the cultural accomplishments of the latter.

"And from bitter experience, we well know that the Indian nation-state seldom articulates such ambitions with wisdom and elegance at high-profile international cultural venues. For instance, similar exercises at the Frankfurt Book Fair have ended in acrimonious displays of internal discord.”

He goes on to add that he writes - not as an observer with nothing at stake - but as a participant who is closely involved in these processes at various levels. From his experience, the first hurdle that he foresees is this: “Who will decide which artist/s will represent India?”

As he points out, a national pavilion cannot really exist without the government's imprimatur, and it’s vulnerable to demands for inclusive representation, in effect, meaning regional quotas. He elaborates: “Many non-governmental curatorial representations of Indian art overseas have suffered equally from the desire to include artists across generations, idioms and regions. This has resulted in an appalling mess with no shape or direction.”

You can read his views on the topic at http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/4872381.cms