Amar Kanwar
"Amar Kanwar" by Christina Bagatavicius, Winter 2007, pp. 94-95
The Indian filmmaker Amar Kanwar’s A Season Outside (1997), the first in a trilogy of his works showing at Whitechapel, casts the thin line dividing India and Pakistan as the protagonist in a lyrical journey through the politics of nonviolence. One of its key scenes documents the closing of the passageway between the two countries at sundown: crowds gather on both sides of the border to cheer on two soldiers who confront each other in a ritualized gate-shutting ceremony. The tension builds as the men perform an elaborate military dance—a pas de deux filled with aggression and masculine bravado. Kanwar, who narrates the piece, reflects on how at the crossing “Only the butterflies and birds are free to fly across and even sit safely on the wires as they do not hurt the circuit.”
His films exist at the crossroads of documentary, visual poetry and philosophical meditation. Each of the works in the trilogy weaves together exquisite, intimate details of the everyday with gritty documentary footage that traces the anxieties of contemporary India. Although their narratives are political, the films unfold like personal memories that meander abstractly rather than adopting a dogmatic position.
This trilogy was screened as part of the three-month London-wide festival India Now, which marked the 60th anniversary of India’s partition. While this was the first time that Kanwar, who is based in New Delhi, has shown the trilogy in the U.K., he is internationally renowned and has directed more than 40 films. He has garnered considerable attention within the art world thanks to his participation in documenta 11 in 2002 as well as this year’s documenta 12.
The second film in the trilogy, To Remember (2003), pays tribute to the father of pacifism, Mahatma Gandhi. Here the camera adopts the position of a witness, silently following visitors on their pilgrimage to a shrine devoted to Gandhi at New Delhi’s Birla House, the site of his assassination. The resolute silence of the film renders each image all the more haunting and also alludes to Gandhi’s non-violent expression of resistance, which included fasting without speaking.
The last film, A Night of Prophecy (2002), travels across four distinct regions of India, exploring themes of injustice and violence through poetry and song. Individuals living in conflict zones across the Indian subcontinent share brutal tales of oppression, spilled blood and caste-bound poverty. Some of their tragedies are expressed in communal melodies of sadness, while other performances are rage-filled pleas for change. While the film’s subjects exist in worlds that never intersect, their collective voice reveals poetry’s restorative and visionary power. Most beguiling is the trilogy’s dreamlike quality—the films allow the viewer to glimpse something deeply provoking without explaining it away.
Subscribe to Canadian Art today and save 30% off the newstand price.
