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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
