The Seventh Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

WAEL SHAWKY Egypt b.1971 Telematch Sadat (stills) 2007 Single-channel HD video projection, 10:34 minutes, sound, colour / Images courtesy: The artist This year’s Asia Pacific Triennial has expanded its perspective to include a significant presentation of works by artists from West Asia, an area that spans the landmass stretching from Xinjiang province in western China to the European shore of the Bosphorus in Istanbul, Turkey. This expansion is appropriate, since West Asia is a region that has throughout history performed as the passage for exchange from East and Central Asia across to the borders of Europe. Some of the earliest human migrations moved from Africa through the Middle East to Asia, and the three related monotheistic religions — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — were born and first shared within this geography. Later, the transfer of trade and cultural relations along various pathways accumulatively came to be known as the Silk Route. Referring to these strong historical connections, contemporary artistic practices from Central Asia have begun to be investigated in dialogue with those from the Caucasus and the Middle East in recent exhibitions such as the 11th Istanbul Biennial (2009) and the 1st Kiev Biennial (2012), a dialogue that now extends into the broader regional focus of the APT. While current political and territorial tensions in this region tend to eclipse the long-lasting impact of religious upheavals and periods spent under Ottoman, communist or colonial rule, these historical eras also formed a sense of shared heritage. Distinct populations are united by language, with a majority of those in central Asia speaking one of the Turkic languages. In the Middle East, alongside Arabic, a Turkic influx also brought with it Türkmen, Azeri and Turkish. 1 It is an area of environmental extremes, where the Fertile Crescent arcs from the Levantine coast across Iraq and Iran, buffered by hot arid desert. This lush belt of land lured human settlement, and the earliest urban civilisation in the world sprung to life in Mesopotamia. Conquests, crusades and imperial expansions later brought new people and ideas, each episode dramatically rewriting history. These centuries of invasion, migration and trade have enabled the development of complex and continually evolving cultural practices. Contemporary artists have continued this process, breaking away from traditional techniques and media, as well as from appropriating Western styles and representational aesthetics, to offer unique positions and approaches. In the last two decades, the region has generated several major contemporary art platforms, such as the Istanbul and Sharjah biennials and the Art Dubai art fair, which have linked artists to broader international networks. Many artists are global citizens, living both in their native country as well as abroad. Focusing on this region, 0 – Now: Traversing West Asia brings together photography, video, sculpture and multimedia installations by seven artists who share an interest in the historical and current movements of people, and the shifts in power and compositions of landscape in West Asia. Included are works that refer to previous acts and ongoing proposals to redefine national borders; the military crusades initiated in the 11th century that sought to reintroduce Christianity to the Muslim world; and the effects of repression and economic turmoil caused by the comings and goings of the Ottoman Empire and Soviet Union intervention and rule. Slavs and Tatars ‘is a faction of polemics and intimacies devoted to the area known as Eurasia’. 2 In APT7, their work PrayWay 2012 creates a central pivot of interaction in the exhibition. Combining the forms of the rahlé (stands used for holy books, including the Qu’ran) and the traditional carpet-draped riverbeds found across West Asia, visitors are invited to gather and interact with the work as a community. Part of a series of works entitled ‘The Faculty of Substitution’, it aims to ‘probe what it means to adopt the innermost thoughts, experiences, beliefs, and sensations of something, someone, or somewhere else, as one’s own, in a drive towards self-discovery.’ 3 Slavs and Tatars’ research encompasses the entire region of West Asia, as do, in a more minimal form, some of the time-related rulers of Cevdet Erek, one of which provides the title for 0 – Now. While many are abstract, with their references to time and positioning left open for interpretation, a few hint at specific moments — such as one ruler that relates to Erek’s own life span, or another that marks the dates of the coups d’état that took place in Turkey in the twentieth century. All indicating separate but, for Erek, related events, his rulers play with rhythm and the representation of time to condense such moments into short, penned lines that can be continually drawn and redrawn. 0 – NOW: TRAVERSING WEST ASIA NOVEMBER PAYNTER 234