A look at ‘West Heavens’ art project involving top Indian artists

Alongside the recent Shanghai Biennale, a significant project was organized, entitled ‘West Heavens’. It was one of those rare Chinese-Indian collaborations in the field of art.

• From Mumbai to Shanghai via Sardar Sarovar and The Three Gorges was a journey Tushar Joag embarked upon on a motorcycle. He named it ‘Rocinante’, after Don Quixote’s horse.
  
  
• Atul Bhalla opted to connect recent historical sites on the verge of being forgotten, within site of inner Shanghai, as a ‘Listener’: to water, to streams, harbors, rivers, canals, wells etc.
  
  
• Anant Joshi’s work was based on cultural icons and architectural monuments like the Gateway of India in Mumbai, or the Zhengyangmen in Beijing.
  
  
• Gigi Scaria’s installation included two parallel projections - selected archival images of Mahatma Gandhi’s life and the images from that of Mao Zedong’s life.
  
  
• Sonia Khurana’s ‘Trespass’ explored sites of subversion, juxtaposing fragments from two parallel projects.
  
  
• The 14 scrolls as part of ‘Over Land’, by Nilima Sheikh, were placed perfectly as the only one in the former consul’s spired Anglican chapel. The artist had painted and stenciled images onto flowing paper-and-silk strips. The long pieces hung delicately from the high ceiling. Softly lighted in the otherwise deserted and dim church, it carried the soothing feel of a sacred work.
  
  
• Among the other Indian participants, Hema Upadhyay portrays the pangs of migration, leading to loneliness, insecurity and isolation.
  
  
• Raqs Media Collective has been variously described as artists, media practitioners, curators, researchers, editors, and catalysts of cultural processes.
  
  
• ‘Railway from Lhasa to Kathmandu’ done by Qiu Zhijie, one among the Chinese participants, touched on many of the exhibit’s recurrent themes: faith, colonialism & the demarking/ crossing of national boundaries. Traditional artisans, who make thangka (a kind of Tibetan embroidered painting mostly employed for religious purposes) were commissioned. These modern pieces, hanging in an eerie old dorm, depicted the tale of an Indian spy. Disguised as a lama, Nain Singh Rawat was hired by a British captain to journey all the way to Lhasa, in order to map the area.