A Voyage between Cultures

The Continental Shift Exhibition

David Galloway

Farairan Art Quarterly. No 7 . Spring 2001

“Art is a guide to prolific exchanges between global cultures.” This was the slogan and mission of the “Continental Shift” exhibition; one of the largest exhibitions of the new millennium. A collaborative effort by the Ludwig Forum in Aachen (Germany), the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht (Holland), the Stadsgalerij in Heerlen (Holland) and the Museum of Modern Art in Liège (Belgium), the exhibition was held from May 21 to September 10 in the border regions of these three countries, a reflection of the cultural, historical and social exchanges and differences of border areas. It was a successful and unique experiment aiming to disseminate cultural similarities, support border cultures and overcome national cultural customs.
Over one hundred young artists from Korea, Japan, China and South America who are now residing in Europe contributed over 300 works of painting, sculpture, multi-media, installation, video and music to this exhibition. These pieces were not limited to specific cultural-geographic categories, but reflected art and culture in a variety of continents.

“Continental Shift” clearly addressed issues of contemporary debates: population migration, multi-cultural phenomena and globalization. Migrant artists, whose work focused on regional and indigenous issues, were a prominent presence in the exhibition, thus spectators were exposed to completely original manifestations of new domains and the realms of fantasy. The contact and connection of various cultures was put on display. Carrying a rich store of culture and tradition, Asian artists had created works of great authenticity. Geographic boundaries were blurred, the past history and culture of people o display , and spectator was transported to the past , immersed

In the present and offered a glimpse of the future .While the narrative subjects may have been of our forefathers , the narrative style was contemporary.

The Ludwig Forum, Aachen:Art of South America , Japan and Korea

Europe and Latin America have a long-standing history of cultural exchange. This exhibition featured the work of Lygia Clark and Wilfredo Lam, displaying the similarities between European Surrealist and Structuralist styles and the elements of Afro-Cuban art.

The Statdsgalerij, Heerlen: Art of Iran and Armeni

“Tradition and the Universal Particular” was the focus of this section of the exhibition, displaying the work of six Iranian and Armenian artists. These artists utilized both the traditional media of sculpture and painting and newer forms such as installation and video art, giving expression to their cultural heritage in Western structures. An example is the work of Parviz Tanavoli, where traces of the Saqqa-khaneh school of the 1960s are evident.

Bonnefanten Museum,Maastricht:Art of Africa

This section of “Continental Shift” was devoted to young African artists; a generation influenced by Western art and with very broad perspectives. In their art one was confronted with a world where the boundaries of time and space have been lifted, a consequence of democracy, the rise of transport networks and communications technology. This is the reason for the double awareness in their work, which is both African and European.

Fifteen artists from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong displayed works in this section, works resulting from the encounter of European customs and the native traditions of the artists.

Museum of Modern Art, Liege: Art of China

Fifteen artists from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong displayed works in this section, works resulting from the encounter of European customs and the native traditions of the artists

Tradition and the Universal Particular :The Persian Legacy

David Galloway

In ancient cultures with a highly articulated visual heritage, the attitude toward tradition is often conflicted, and being a “serious” contemporary artist may well mean adaptation to the latest “isms” being promoted in the West. In Iran, however, a new kind of rapprochement with tradition became apparent in the early 1960s, when a number of artists returned from their studies abroad and sought fresh aesthetic orientation within their own culture. The highly stylized idioms of courtly “Persian” art held little appeal, but the indigenous, quotidian form-language of Iranian life (as well as that of Shi‘ite religion) seemed to offer an inexhaustible and largely untapped source of inspiration.

One of the first to exploit such resources was the sculptor Parviz Tanavoli, who had studied with Marino Marini in Milan and would become a highly influential teacher in his own country. Along with such colleagues as Charles-Hossein Zenderoudi, this younger, unconventional generation began to explore indigenous crafts, calligraphy, religious posters, pilgrims’ souvenirs and talismans. Out of such shared enthusiasm, the Saqqa-khaneh school was born. It took its name from the humble neighborhood fountains which not only provide relief to the thirsty but with their grilleand calligraphic ornamentation also resemble shrines. In hopes of “binding” their entreaties to this holy place, visitors attached locks, chains or simple scraps of cloth to the grille covering the fountain. A simple neighborhood institution thus provided young Iranian artists with themes, motifs and even materials which were endorsed

neither by courtly precedent nor by Western fashion.

The bronzes of Parviz Tanavoli are representative of the works produced by this informal group. The “earthworks” of Marco Grigorian and the works of Sonia Balassanian were also shaped, in the early years, by the same sorts of impulses that were being fostered by the Saqqa-khaneh school. The group had already begun to disperse even before the Islamic Revolution of 1978, however, and for a later generation its achievements were scarcely more than a legend. Yet these younger practitioners, including Shirin Neshat, are intrigued by many of the same aspects of popular culture which animated their predecessors. Neshat, however, belongs to a generation which has worked almost entirely within the diaspora. Her provocative commentaries on the role of womenin Islam have emerged from her atelier in New York. Her oeuvre has a major antecedent in the self-portraits, enhanced by calligraphy, which Sonia Balassanian began to produce in New York shortly after the revolution. There are also parallels in the work of Fariba Hajamadi, who has suggested that the traditional art museum— not unlike religious fundamentalism—prescribes explicit female roles and acceptable “postures.” But Farkhondeh Shahroudi, who completed her studies at the Tehran Art Academy before emigrating to Germany in 1990, the gender issues are also central, yet she prefers to see her work as “feminine” rather than “feminist.” Like many of her contemporaries, including the painter Karan Khorasani, geographical distance to Persian culture has helped focus the fascination of its rich visual codes. There is nothing programmatic or nostalgic in the allusions that result, yet they suggest the depth of that reservoir of image and metaphor accessible to the artist who spent his formative years in close contact with Iranian culture. Tradition, such as younger artists make clear, is not solely a matter of cultural achievements of the past but of the lived, experiential present which demands articulation, even in exile. A quality that might be summed up as “the universal particular.”

Asia’s Century

If the 20th century was America’s century, then the 21st belongs to Asia. English as a world language will receive considerablecompetition from Asia. Between 1954 and 1972, the Japanese GUTAI Group (Gutai Bijutsu Kyokai) arranged a number of events and exhibitions that are seen as forerunners of happenings and fluxus, creating a radical turning point in both national and international art history… the highpoint of a western dialogue between and with emptiness.

Among the works on display in this exhibition were Kazuo Katase’s installation Summer Guest, the sculptures of Yuji Takeoka and the photography of Hiroshi Sugimoto. The relationship between space and time, between light, air and atmosphere can also be seen here. The global media sector as dialogue is represented by Nam June Paik, who is considered the highly popular “Father of Video Art” in Germany, in whose wake artists such as Moriko Moriquite naturally combine mystical tradition with pop-like virtual reality. All can be considered a dispersion of the indigenous art of these artists to other climates and cultures, directed towards promoting a hybrid culture.

Rich and Complex

The cultural exchange between Europe and Latin America has without doubt the richest tradition, but is also the most complex and most muddled. The development of the free arts in Latin America was always oriented towards Europe’s. On the other hand, works by non-European artists were only respected and promoted when interest in non-European forms of culture increased in the wake of Cubism and Surrealism.

The best known artists from Latin America are represented by Wilfredo Lam and Lygia Clark, who played a decisive role in the drive towards further developing Surrealism and Constructivism during the forties and fifties. Wilfredo Lam gave an academically rigid European Surrealism new life and “resurrected” mythical, sometimes bizarre or threatening figures from the Afro-Cuban Santaria cult in Caribbean landscapes. Lam and Clark’s multi-faceted artistic solutions are still relevant to Latin America’s artistic development—but their significance to the international history of art remained largely undiscovered.

Chinese Traditions

In the beginning there was Paris, there was Zao Wou-ki, who came to France in 1948 and has in the meantime become highly respected, who developed his own type of abstract art from the stylized language of Chinese painting and calligraphy. But Chinese artists repeatedly take fresh looks at their traditions, and particularly the “classical” medium of ink painting.

A mountain of paper, printed products hunted by a shredder, from which the sound of a typewriter can be heard: an installation called The Zero Point of Literature by the Taiwanese artist Wu Mali. Roland Barthes, quoted in the title, and his thesis on the death of the author has been radically extrapolated to the death of the text, death of letters.

The theme of human faces is also on the wall, in a series of small-format, portrait heads almost reminiscent of the late MiddleAges, with secretive closed eyes, created by the Taiwanese Wei C. H. Xavier.

Chen Zhen on the other hand, offers an old Zen technique as a natural cure for the conflicts of the world, according to which the two disputing parties receive “Fifty strokes for each” through which their enlightenment can be achieved. •

1-From “Asia’s Century” by Gregor Jansen, published in the exhibition catalogue.

2-From “‘Made In’ Latin America?” by Annette Lagler, published in the exhibition catalogue.

3-From “Chinese Artists in Europe since the Second World War” by Yang Wen-i, published in the exhibition catalogue.