A Conversation with Photographer Sohrab Hura, Curator of ‘Growing Like A Tree’
Ishara Art Foundation, located in Dubai’s art hub Alserkal Avenue, is the first permanent space in the Gulf dedicated to showcasing South Asian contemporary art. Their most recent exhibition, Growing Like A Tree, is the inaugural curatorial project of Delhi-based photographer Sohrab Hura. The exhibition features works by 14 artists and collectives from in and around South Asia, including Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Pakistan, Myanmar, Singapore, and Germany.
Growing Like A Tree presents a glimpse into individual and collective journeys of rooting and uprooting places as markers of identity. Hura maps a network of past and present collaborations with the 14 artists and collectives in the show, expanding the geographical framework of South Asia. The exhibition explores the interconnectedness of contemporary art practice and artistic collaboration, and tackles themes of collective memory, the environment, public space, and the archive.
Postscript’s Arts & Culture contributor, Sadaf Habib, sat down with Sohrab Hura prior to the opening of the show to explore the show and its origins.
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Sadaf Habib (Postscript): This is your first time curating an exhibition. What was the process of moving from solely exhibiting your work to curating other people? What was that journey like and what are the differences you’re finding? Is there anything that surprised you?
Sohrab Hura: In a way, some of it is quite familiar already because in my own work I’ve been trying to, well, my own work is expanding quite a bit. At the same time, I’ve known almost everyone in this show for quite some time, some for nearly thirteen years. I like to work with young artists, not so much to give [experience] to them, but more for me to be able to stay alive, because I think that I’m very scared that the more I accumulate, the more I start to get less and less in touch with the pulse of the world outside. This helps me to vicariously keep in touch with something I feel. As I accumulate more in terms of experience and everything else, I feel like I’m also losing something. So this helps me to have that circulation going.
For me, even this show has been more about taking already ongoing conversations that have been happening for a long time and giving it some sort of form here.There was already this momentum, so I didn’t have to start from scratch. This whole idea of interconnectedness, or even the title ‘Growing Like A Tree’, I’d already been describing my entire process as one of expanding like the branches of a tree. The momentum was already there. What did surprise me was to be actually working with these artists and people formally. I was very conscious about wanting to care about their work, and so much so that at times I think I was caring too much. I know that I’ve been having these simultaneous conversations with everyone on this show for many years, but to actually pull everything together, I had to find a new equilibrium within that. At the same time, to be doing it here in a place like Dubai, like you said you’re Pakistani but you grew up here, for me, it sounds so normal. Coming from back home, somehow I don’t hear these words and in a way, I’ve been trying to pull everything together from a distance and to actually be in the space, to actually be getting dropped off to Ishara pretty much every day by someone called Sohail, who’s from Lahore and my grandparents are from Lahore -
PS: I’m actually also from Lahore!
SH: Yeah, so my other side, my other set of grandparents are from Dhaka. It’s not new to have these connections. In the times that we’ve all grown up in...I mean, we’re showing an idea of what this milieu could be. It’s a sort of a projection in a different space. I was way more conscious of what it meant to be showing in a place like Dubai, by actually being in Dubai. To be seeing that whenever you’re stepping out, people are talking in Hindi and Urdu and it’s a normal thing. Even in a place like India, you speak different languages and I, coming from North India, which is quite hegemonic, I feel very conscious and would rather talk in English. And then to come here and to realise that talking in a language which has a different meaning suddenly, this one assortment or amalgamation of Hindi/Urdu, becomes a node.
Being here, I realized that this show is actually more of a passing through of something, at this point only. Because if it were being shown somewhere else...even if it was still Growing Like a Tree, and the ideas were the same, maybe certain combinations and permutations might come across differently.
“I am writing and creating footnotes around the work, which is what allows for the works to open up into something else outside the show and bring other things in which have been invisible.”
You talked about the idea of footnotes being important to your publication, and actually, for this show, it is also a lot about the footnotes. I am writing and creating footnotes around the work, which is what allows for the works to open up into something else outside the show and bring other things in which have been invisible. You might think it’s a show which has 14 artists, but actually speaking ...if you look at the front [of the gallery], I’ve created what I like to call an ‘incomplete map of interconnectedness’. This show is about many more people who are not necessarily present here.
PS: I really appreciate this idea of recognizing all of the different voices that might not necessarily be attached to the artwork but have a hold in this space and in what it has become. I’d love to hear more about why bringing together and crossing boundaries, of physical countries and also mediums, and then putting that into a display or, specifically, an exhibition space in the UAE (a crossing point) is important. How do you think this gallery space has a power within it - or what is that power?
SH: The spaces that are always interesting for me are the overlaps. So not even intersections, but if you’re overlapping three or four or five circles, some parts will emerge more focused and defined, where there’s more overlap. What’s interesting for me is to look at these different groupings of overlaps. This show is like a valve. Especially if you look at Nepal Picture Library, which in one corner has these photographs made from the 1960s and 1990s, where you had this underground mass movement against the Royal Family in Nepal. This archive is from the perspective of people who were part of that resistance movement.
But a lot of the works, both on and off the wall, are being made right now, by people who are still alive. It makes me wonder if, in the 1960s, or if between that period, those images that were being made were being made for similar [or different] reasons. Today, they become way more open, they become an archive, where I can go and I can have my own reading of it. How will these works open up, after 30 or 40 years? What kind of life will they be living? I wouldn’t say the show is about looking at different regions or any of those things, there’s so many different parameters. Not even parameters, but entry points. I think it’s more about opening as many doors, and allowing the water to flow in and also flow out, then come back again. It’s this swishing, like the moment you put a tap on and in the beginning, the water swishes within a wash basin… it’s that moment which I hope exists here.
Installation view of Growing like a Tree, curated by Sohrab Hura at Ishara Art Foundation. Images courtesy of the artists and Ishara Art Foundation. Photography by Ismail Noor/Seeing Things.
Talking about this physical space, what I was very conscious of was bringing in people who might have been outsiders to a space like this, a space like this does accentuate the way one considers a work. I actually feel like there’s way more exciting work usually happening outside these institutions. I do want to bring in these voices that inspire me, and at the same time, I hope that they don’t get trapped by these same walls that might have kept people out. I’m aware of a certain gravitas of these high walls and all white, but to turn something into an amplification, I would rather direct that amplification towards voices and works and resonances that I can connect to more, without looking at them within the context that they’re shown.
PS: Do you think of this as an exhibition that you might be hoping to travel with or is this kind of the space for it?
SH: No, I don’t know about the travelling bit at all.
PS: Yeah, travel is a bit of a question mark these days.
SH: No, but the reason I’m saying this is because we were talking about the passing through, and at the moment, I don’t know what the travelling of this show might mean, simply because if it goes to another space…[the show] is a mark being left here. If it goes to another space, will it be put out as a mark that was left in Dubai, at Ishara -- which is also a South Asian context? But the show has also got people from Myanmar, from Singapore, from Australia. Anjali House is from Cambodia. I don’t want to trap myself in this idea [of ‘South Asian’]. I don’t know what it means to be Indian. Yet, today in the political context, there’s this identity of who constitutes an Indian and who does not, with this new Act, the new government, the new socio-political scene. It’s being imposed on us. How can I want to reject that, and take on this other identity of something larger? But it still has those very definite boundaries.
For me, I’m able to say certain things because it’s Dubai, but I’m also not able to say certain things because it’s Dubai. In a way this show is a mark meant for this time, in this place. If it gets to travel, it will be important to let it travel, but as a mark in this context.
PS: So to have it stay specific, to note that it started here in Dubai.
“The one thing I don’t want to do is to put a box around other people, because I have been put out as being an “Indian” artist.”
SH: As someone who is making work myself, I always felt that I was becoming part of an identity or an agenda or something that was… you know, I was being contextualised. And I’m also contextualising other people right now. The one thing I don’t want to do is to put a box around other people, because I have been put out as being an “Indian” artist; somehow these institutions often require that label to be able to support us. I’m happy that Ishara has given me the space to not put out a “South Asian” project, even though one of the nodes is from there, and there is something growing from the larger region. But it does not want to be limited by that.
PS: You maintain openness. There’s a consideration of places that are close to us [in South Asia], and a little different, but that can still speak to the context.
SH: What’s interesting for me is this idea of movements. I remember when I was starting to learn photography, I was 22, 23, and I realised that I had way more friends who were Bangladeshi photographers than people in India. And then, quite organically, I developed friendships in Nepal and Cambodia and Singapore. At some point in time, when the institution started to come in, or whatever it was at the time, a gallery or something that was trying to peg me into a context, it started to feel very artificial. Simply because I was aware that I’d already experienced openness.
So I started to question: what’s the node within the larger region that I always gravitate towards? It’s Kathmandu. Because Kathmandu is accessible to everyone from the region, you know? I realised that many of us would travel together and that became a cauldron, how Dubai is too. You can leave your baggage behind when you come here. To come to India is hard for people from Pakistan, or for people from Bangladesh, in general. And vice-versa, it’s not easy to get to Bangladesh, or Pakistan. But Nepal somehow allows so many of these entry points. For me it was great to become part of a much larger conversation than I would have if I were to not have these entry points. At the same time, they could be even bigger. The idea is to be opening up, and not to be closing. Including in my own mind, in terms of how I’m looking at the idea of conversations.
PS: That’s something that really resonates with me. The UAE has a very large Pakistani population, but all through school and college, my friends were often Arab or Indian, or even Nepali. I think that was almost a situation where I didn’t want to feel like ‘being Pakistani’ wrong. Where if I’m with friends, people who are Indian or even Arab, they have a sense of my culture, a sense of where I’m coming from, but they don’t have the specificity of saying oh, you know, that is last season’s fashion or that’s not the right slang term, or whatever other baggage comes with strict ‘Pakistani’-ness.
PS: You talked earlier about being more comfortable in English. I’m very much the same, my Urdu is passable but not great. Building from there, how do you situate your work within language?
Jaisingh Nageswaran, I FEEL LIKE A FISH (2020). Archival pigment print, 46 cm x 61 cm. © Jaisingh Nageswaran.
SH: Language is very political. In a place like India, because I’m comfortable in English, a lot of doors open for me. Automatically, my work gets situated on its own. Whereas, there would be a lot of other people who have so much to say, but there’s no space for their language. Even if they are talking in English, language is not just about the language itself, but how one says it, and how one uses it. What’s the logic of that? There’s so many other things that end up building a much larger idea of language. For example, Jaisingh Nageswaran, is more comfortable in Tamil, and I think his language is very powerful. When we asked him about the language he planned to use, because we wanted his text to be the work itself, he wanted to take on a new language [English], which was not his, in order to be able to put out a message to more people. Whereas, Nida [Mehboob], who’s from Pakistan, chose Urdu for a very different reason.
I’ve realised that I've always been interested in this idea of distance. By distance, I mean gestures as well - how much do I give? How much do I hold back? Sometimes language allows you to find that balance as well. For someone like Nida, maybe she wanted to find a balance which was not as gripping outwards as Jaisingh, so she chose to use Urdu. Now this is about spoken language, but the way we even use the language of work, in terms of the photographic language for example, unfortunately a lot of it gets rooted in aesthetics. For me, language is more about the usage of the language itself. I think that’s where it's important to me that this institution opens up to a far wider array, to the way people use the language, even if it is English. I know that the institution is way more open to someone like me, than to some of the people who might be in the show today.
PS: I know you’ve said that you’ve worked with all these artists before and that these are conversations that have already existed, but in terms of the work itself that’s in the space today, how much of it was work that’s been commissioned for this exhibit versus pre-existing work that’s been recontextualised?
SH: Nothing has been commissioned. Very often institutions use works that I think are already resolved. And it was important for me because this is not a museum, this is a foundation. As a foundation, I wanted there to be a space for someone to experiment, for someone to take a chance with their work and see what comes out of it. The works have not been commissioned for the institution, but what they’re making here, some of it could be, as I mentioned, a passing through point. In our conversations around what it means to show in a place like this, with Jaisingh for example, we talked about: what do you want? Do you want just your photographs to be there, or do you want something that is deep? What you’re saying - which is in fact where the photographs come from - would you want to actually put that out? What does it mean to be saying that in a space like this? How does one then enter [Jaisingh’s] other, larger works? So there was not a single commission, but with some of them, there was a temporary recalibration, only for this space and this time, in order to maybe provoke them into taking a chance to expand and then go back if they wanted.
I’m not the same person as I was when I imagined Dubai from far away. In the beginning, I kept getting told by many people that it’s this futuristic dystopia. But then I was taken to the beach side and I went to eat in a Mallu restaurant, and it started to feel a little more like home. It felt good. It felt more real, you know, to just not being on a highway the whole time. To actually look at families. It sounds very corny. But as a person, I think when I’m going back, I’ll be different, and that’s what we were hoping for. That this show doesn’t just become a show, but an opening up. There’s people who might have recalibrated a little bit, just to take a chance, to live with it, to see what it does. Maybe they go back to being the same, maybe the works go back to being the same, maybe the work unfolds into something else. And we wanted the show to be that, and not a collection of work that has just been made and shown.
PS: I like the word you used earlier of being a “valve”. Of having lots of points of entry, and have the show as a valve into all of these questions. It sounds to me like the individual art works are valves too, calibrated so that it could be the first time you approach the artist’s work but it’s accessible enough to provoke you to look deeper. About the city: Dubai is a city that doesn’t always feel like it’s a real city or a real place. There's this sort of artificiality about it that I think is true and not true. It’s interesting when you can find those spaces that make you go ‘oh, right, people live here, people have lives here.’
Installation view of Growing like a Tree, curated by Sohrab Hura at Ishara Art Foundation. Images courtesy of the artists and Ishara Art Foundation. Photography by Ismail Noor/Seeing Things.
SH: That’s what this show is trying to do. It isn’t really the works on the wall, it’s somewhere in between the different works, where the footnotes come in, to kind of push it towards this grey space. Unfortunately, that’s the world we’re living in mostly, where everything is fixed. It’s more and more important to find these other portals, which is why Protick, Sarker Protick from Bangladesh, has got a video which is a portal in the show. And that’s not the only portal. There’s also the entrance from one space to another, the works themselves, and the footnotes. We’re not quite sure if the works are portals to the footnotes, or the footnotes are actually portals into and away from the works.
PS: What/how do you think of the value, or is there any kind of urgency you feel in exhibiting a wider variety of South Asian work, both in the region and internationally?
SH: I would answer it differently, because the danger in just exhibiting South Asian artists is that I’ll get exhibited, while many other people might not.
PS: Can I phrase it differently, then? Why these artists?
SH: The show is not meant to be a survey show. Even when I’m talking about the tree, I’m actually talking about the much larger forest. I’m writing a text and I've written about, when I was starting off, there being this beautiful (from afar) shiny tree, gilded in metal, which is always imposed on all of us. I’ve always wanted to be on that tree but I could never be on it. What was important to me in this show was that I don’t turn into that metal tree myself.
This show is also about realising that it’s a very small extraction of something much larger. Which is why it’s not a survey show. The only way I could take it was in the way I actually work, which is more of a journal format, where I can take responsibility for the people I’m inviting to the show.
So why these artists? Because they’re people who I have been in conversation with for a long time. They're people for who, this is their first institutional exhibition. I didn’t want to put out a roster of names. I want people to dig further into who these people are. I didn’t want a show where people might enter the show because they’re entering through certain names. It is also unfortunate that I have 14 people - why not 20? Why not 30? But the largest structure of this show is through my life because, see, I’m not a curator. I’m someone making work myself, who has been asked to curate. What helped me was that I also make books, so the structure of the show is also in terms of a book, and it’s also in terms of a first person narrative. But in some cases, the first person narrative could be someone else's, but I’m mixing it all up because I also want you to be the first person and to be able to recognize something.
I think pretty much all the people in the show are making work because of specific urgencies. Neither of them being more equal than the other. It was an extract of many urgencies that I feel lucky to be part of, that I could actually place within the context of where we are today in Dubai. There might be some urgencies that I might not be able to place because the system here is not that open to it, or maybe because something else fits in here better.
Installation view of Growing like a Tree, curated by Sohrab Hura at Ishara Art Foundation. Images courtesy of the artists and Ishara Art Foundation. Photography by Ismail Noor/Seeing Things.
PS: Speaking about this place, and about your role as a maker rather than a curator - do you have any further plans or any interest in making work in the UAE? And particularly, in/about the different kinds of populations here?
SH: There is no difference [to me] between curation and making work, whatever I’ve experienced of curation. In the end, it’s about trying to build an experience. Even, for example, when you go in the show, the text is not descriptive; the text is there to make myself as vulnerable as the other people. A lot of the people in the show are sharing their vulnerabilities and I don’t want to end up being a curator who is just turning it into material. I wanted to make sure that I was on equal footing as far as putting my vulnerabilities out.
In the beginning it was a bit confusing because you are part of an institution. But then it helped me to remind myself that I made books first. That has a different structure of putting things together, a way to tell a story, and I would want you to be able to connect to some of the stories, even if it's the small idiosyncrasies or the gestures. I would want someone who’s of a different generation to also be able to connect to it. In a way, it is an assortment, like cooking perhaps. Usually, I'd describe this in terms of daal, and I’m putting the tadka, but actually noodle soup is more like it. The main works are the noodles. The footnotes, which are directly related to them, are the condiments. And I have to somehow make the right broth for it, to make it something more fulsome as an experience. In the end, it’s about an experience, and if I’m able to open up my vulnerabilities, I’m hoping that gives a momentum into other people’s vulnerabilities and makes you look at some of the works differently, instead of just as a set of photos on the wall.
PS: Noodle soup, I like that - there’s a real warmth to that metaphor that is too often sanitized out of these gallery lights and white walls.
Growing Like A Tree runs until 20 May 2021.