Monday, March 22, 2010
Borderline (2010), a dual-stream video installation by Rachel Kalpana James at Enriched Bread Artists
Themed group shows are a crapshoot, but I was already very happy to have dropped in at the Enriched Bread Artists (EBA) building on Saturday for the two-day De-icing show when I climbed the stairs to see the captivating video work called Borderline by Rachel Kapalna James.
Launched on the first official day of spring (March 20), De-icing offered a range of interesting and challenging works, including a delightful arrangement of hardened foam and other wall-adhered objects by former EBA artist Uta Riccius and a small branch-and-resin sculptural piece by Marika Jemma that beautifully captures the often-delicate nature of winter melting away.
Upstairs, James connected to the de-icing theme metaphorically in a looped, two-channel video that contrasts the exaggerated ceremony in a nightly closing of the Pakistan-India border against a solitary traveller’s lonely walk through a different section of the same border.
Captured at the crossing between eastern Pakistan at Wagah and northern India at Amritsar, the ceremony video shows elaborately dressed border guards marching with choreographed flair and urgency on both sides of the divide.
James explains it in her artist’s statement: “Cheered on by thousands of patriots from each side, mustachioed guards tote guns and batons and march in ritual combat with their enemy counterparts in a goose-stepping choreography of military bravado and national pride.”
The parallel video offers a much more subdued border crossing: “… a somewhat silent, solitary and surprisingly casual walk across the India/Pakistan border, as permitted by the bittersweet privilege of the right passport,” explained James.
Born in Warwickshire, England, James’ ancestry is rooted in India and her art practice in her immigrant history.
“I like epistemological questions,” the artist writes on her web site, “such as how we know others and ourselves. Primarily through installation—using bookmaking, photography, video, digital technologies and performance—I explore constructed systems and ideas of language, history and memory in an effort to avoid the usual dichotomies of past/present, private/public, us/them.”
Tony
