“My Place is Placelessness”: Shahpour Pouyan at the Rubin Museum

Installation view, Clapping with Stones: Art and Acts of Resistance at the Rubin Museum. August 16, 2019-January 6, 2020

Architectural models turned on their head, or their sides, ash spilling out of them. My Place is the Placeless (2016-2019) is a set of 15 glazed stoneware objects. With them, Shahpour Pouyan transforms architectural form into personal relics. This installation is part of the exhibition Clapping with Stones: Art and Acts of Resistance on view at the Rubin Museum through January 6, 2020.

Installation view of Shahpour Pouyan, My Place is the Placeless (2016-2019)

The objects are neat but handmade, finished in a neutral palette yet rough edged. Each is unique, and displays the roof of a different type of building, which might be round or pointed. Thick red earthenware walls peak out of the unglazed edges. Ash spilling out makes them feel a little less static, a little more in process of coming together or falling apart. What brings these miniature domes together in a vitrine?

Installation view of Shahpour Pouyan, My Place is the Placeless (2016-2019)

Shahpour Pouyan made this body of work in response to the results of a DNA test, which informed the New York-based, Iranian-born artist that his genetic heritage came from far-flung parts of the world such as Scandinavia and South Asia. The artist created architectural forms based on the indigenous architectural practices of those disparate places, uniting them just as he in his person unites such a heritage–a kind of architectural genetics. Only later did Pouyan learn that those results were a mistake, and some of those connections were false. As he continued making this group of work, he added ash. The ash serves as a reminder of past histories, which may or may not have been real.

Installation view of Shahpour Pouyan, My Place is the Placeless (2016-2019)

The ash transforms the little vessels into urns, while the form recalls the idea of dwelling and home. Pouyan materializes the forms of home and the past but is distanced from it. The title of the work, “My Place is the Placeless,” comes from a poem by Rumi:

I am not from the East

or the West,

not out of the ocean

or up from the ground,

not natural or ethereal,

not composed of elements at all.

I do not exist,

am not an entity in this world

or in the next,

did not descend from Adam and Eve

or any origin story.

My place is placeless,

a trace of the traceless.

These little monuments of poetic form mark what could be as much as what is. In doing so, they question any kind of origin story.

Installation view of Shahpour Pouyan, My Place is the Placeless (2016-2019)

Pouyan’s work resists the easy and straightforward identities that we give to ourselves and others, offering a multi-valent mode of being instead. From onion dome to stupa, one can draw formal parallels between the rounded and pointed tops as well. Artmaking in this case is an act of reconciliation, imagining all the heritages together at one table. Such a syncretic understanding of culture is amplified by the view of the installation just beyond Pouyan’s vitrine.

Installation view, Clapping with Stones: Art and Acts of Resistance at the Rubin Museum. August 16, 2019-January 6, 2020

272 suspended red lanterns act as a central visual point for the installation Lotus: Zone of Zero (2019) by Kimsooja, from which comes the layered sounds of Tibetan, Gregorian, and Islamic chants. The lanterns visualize the lotus, a motif of contemplation in the Buddhist tradition that here presents a call for unity even while it visually unifies the space around a central point.

Installation view of Shahpour Pouyan, My Place is the Placeless (2016-2019)

The exhibition moves succinctly between the work of many artists–from Nari Ward and Hank Willis Thomas to Kadar Attia and Lida Abdul–and it can be difficult, even jarring, to move so quickly between strong perspectives that require understanding a local context. Within his own work, Pouyan makes it seem both natural and mythic.

Clapping with Stones: Art and Acts of Resistance is on view at the Rubin Museum until January 6, 2020.

Discover the Lukhang Murals at the Rubin Museum of Art

Potola Palace, Lhasa, Tibet

Hidden in the Potola Palace is the secret Lukhang Temple. Amazingly preserved, this temple is a unique expression of Tantric Buddhist art historically available only to the Dalai Lama and his retinue for deep meditation and closed off to the public. The current Dalai Lama has lifted the silk curtains so to speak, and in addition to allowing visitors has allowed the detailed wall murals to be photographed. Currently at the Rubin Museum of Art you can see the Lukhang Murals even better than you can in the actual temple thanks to new photographic methods by Thomas Laird and Clint Clemens.

A separate room at the museum displays life-size, high resolution pigment prints placed similarly to how they appear in the walls of the temple itself, and handily for me are accompanied by audio recordings that detail at least some of what is going on in these complex scenes. The 18th c. wall paintings illustrate the Dalai Lama’s path to enlightenment and are unusual because these mystical teachings of Tantric Buddhism tend to be passed by whisper rather than openly expressed. 

Detail of East wall showing two Mahasiddha
They are also remarkable for their color and complexity, and the sense of order maintained despite the activity of all the tiny figures. While the recording only touch upon the surface of what is going on in each panel, nonetheless it provides a great and enticing background. With such expressive figures and scenes, I found my imagination going into overdrive as I examined them, and I had to promise myself I would come back for a second look.
 

While I imagine these setting isn’t quite as awe-inspiring as ascending by wooden ladder to this hidden secret in the Dalai Lama’s palace in Tibet, it’s certainly more accessible. 

More information here: 
http://hem.bredband.net/ritnyb/lukhang.html
http://www.asianart.com/articles/baker/index.htmll

Body Language: Photographs by Thomas Kelly at the Rubin

Thomas Kelly, Smoking Sadhu (2000)

Body Language: The Yogis of India and Nepal, up through July 4,  is a fascinating photograph exhibition in the lower level of the Rubin Museum of Art with prints by Thomas Kelly, an American photographer who has lived and worked in Nepal for many years. This collection of images documents wandering Hindu ascetics called Sadhus, and notably these men and woman paint their bodies in striking colors as they emulate their chosen deities. The Rubin Museum provides context on these remarkable looking people in these beautiful images of naked and painted people with matted hair. The exterior is just one way in which the Sadhu takes on the attribute of the deity he is emulating, which becomes the goal and process of his whole life.

Installation View of  Body Language, Rubin Museum of Art

Kelly writes on his website of sadhus in respect to his book Sadhus: The Great Renouncers:

In my adopted home of Kathmandu, some sadhus survive primarily off alms made from allowing tourists to photograph them. They are a spectacle and love to play their assigned role in the illusion or drama of society. Their masks are thickly painted on their naked bodies. Sadhus have formally abandoned conventional time; their world is dense with its own complex politics, social hierarchy, taboos and customs, often making access challenging.

Volatile and unpredictable, spontaneous photography of sadhus can actually be dangerous. You can easily be trampled or attacked if you immerse yourself in a naga baba procession after a mass Khumba Mela bathing. Or, without permission from a Mahant to work inside an Akhara, be accused of being a spy and have to answer to a Sadhu tribunal. There’s no such thing as achieving photographic acceptance within the Sadhu mandala. For me, photographing at ritual time is always the most dynamic and fluid. Once rapport has been established, a camera is tolerated, often with a sense of lila, or maya, play and illusion. It took repeated visits over many seasons and melas, to occasionally reach this level.

My initial inexplicable attraction to the Sadhu world was mostly visual. As a photographer, I loved how they allowed their bodies to become symbols of the sacred- from walking around naked to remind us of our naked selves, to wearing ash to remind us what are bodies become, to dreadlocks to remind us of our natural wild natures devoid of social convention. Their bodies were texts, which spoke volumes regarding sacred symbolism.

A sadhu’s body is a map of the Hindu universe, for the body is a microcosm of the cosmos. Like a canvas, the colour and painted symbols aid in purification, inspire, and remind of the timeless divine beyond body and form. The body is used to tell stories. As the sadhus works towards an egoless state, he becomes the very symbols he’s painted whether it be Shiva, Vishnu, or Rama, the colors refer to esoteric inner visions and possible alchemical states of consciousness. The real goal of a Sadhu is to achieve an attitude of non-attachment and transcendence of the physical body.

Body Language: The Yogis of India and Nepal is on view at the Rubin Museum of Art through July 4.